


Counselling

by ohgodmyeyes



Series: Night & Day [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Bechdel Test Fail, Dating, Developing Relationship, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Sex, F/M, Family, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Meandering Emotional Vomit, Middle-Aged Anakin Skywalker, Moving On, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Peripheral Smut, Reader-Insert, Romance, Second Chances, Skywalker Family Drama, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 75,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22701625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: You and Anakin built an intimate connection a long time ago... the only problem was that you’d also just been hired by his wife to babysit his children when you began to build it. Although you grew to love him, he left you to go back to her. He had to.She’s died since then, though, and his daughter has been pleading with him to attend grief counselling because she’s worried about him. When he finally does as she asks, he finds himself speaking with you about his loss.It’s a strange surprise for everyone.You fear you may not be the right person to help him with this; however, he seems convinced that you’re the only one who can.Could this be your second chance at having a relationship with Anakin?
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker/Reader
Series: Night & Day [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632838
Comments: 339
Kudos: 384





	1. Fair

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never done this before; however, this story is extremely slow and emotional (it’s meant to be), so if you’re only here because you wanted Ani & The Babysitter to have more sex, I respect that & have indicated the chapters in which they do so with an asterisk.
> 
> You’re welcome. ✌️

You didn’t look very carefully at the paperwork that day. All you knew was that you’d be seeing a man in his late forties about the death of his wife. He was young for a widower, really, and you wondered whether the loss had been a shock, or if he and his family had seen it coming. That would have helped you decide how to speak with him about it, but that information wouldn’t have been on his intake form, so you didn’t check.

By the time you had sat down at your desk that afternoon, you’d already been informed that he was on his way up from the waiting room. You had very little time to prepare both the office and yourself for him, but you tried nonetheless— grief counselling was far from a science; however, you knew what tended to make people in mourning feel comfortable. You always wanted your clients to feel comfortable.

You heard footsteps coming down the hall; thought they sounded familiar... but, you heard so many pairs of feet marching down the corridor outside your office every day that you didn’t really register it. The rumbling cough that emerged from outside the door before you heard your client’s knock, too, took you to a different place in your mind— but again, you couldn’t quite identify which place that was, or why the sound took you there. You didn’t have time to figure it out before the door opened. 

When it did, you found yourself at somewhat of a loss for words. 

He had changed, but only superficially— the lines on his face were deeper than you remembered, and he was wearing his hair a bit shorter these days. Although he was still solid and imposing, he seemed to be withdrawing into himself a bit— which made sense, given what had apparently happened. The fact that he was dressed the same way you’d always remembered him being dressed nearly made you smile: He was wearing what could very well have been the same crisp, white office shirt and dark pants you’d become so used to seeing him in a decade before.

...Had it really been ten years?

You looked at one another’s faces. You couldn’t read him— that never had been easy— but you could feel your own heart begin to beat too quickly, and your stomach tied itself in a special kind of knot you hadn’t felt since the last time you’d seen him: You would never have believed butterflies could hibernate for quite so long.

Because you didn’t know what else to say, you said, “Anakin.”

You thought he almost smiled, too. “...Hi,” he answered. Then, “...Who would have guessed?”

You tried to channel your professionalism. “I’m so sorry, Anakin— for your loss, and for... well, _this._ ” You couldn’t imagine being the person he’d want to talk to about the loss of his wife. After all, it was your relationship with him which had tarnished his connection with her all those years ago, you thought. You continued, “I’ll get someone else to come right away, and—”

He shook his head. “No— stop.” He sighed; said, “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

You did smile, finally. “It’s— well, it’s not that it isn’t nice to see you. I just don’t think I’m the right—”

He shrugged (it was still that same shrug, you noted) as he cut you off a bit more quietly than you’d have expected, “—I can’t actually think of anyone who would understand better.”

You were silent for a moment, thinking. He might have a point.

“...Alright,” you said. “If you’re comfortable, then you’re welcome to sit and talk.”

A bit stiffly, he did sit in a chair you kept placed directly across from your own. There was no desk between you; you kept that pushed up against the wall instead, so it wouldn’t feel too much like a barrier between you and your clients. As happy as you were to see Anakin again, though, you felt you might have appreciated a bit of a barrier between the two of you right about now. You managed because you liked having your job, but it was exceedingly difficult not to reach out and touch him. You had missed touching him.

“I’m not sure what to say,” he admitted, as he gripped the arm of the chair tightly with his left hand. He rested his right on his leg, and for the briefest of moments, you imagined— remembered— what it felt like to hold onto its thin, rigid fingers. 

“Tell me what happened,” you offered. Then, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” which was true, because you had been very much aware of how much Anakin and his wife had meant to one another. You recalled him telling you that he couldn’t live without her, in spite of the state of their relationship at the time you’d connected with him.

He looked down at his hand; seemed to be studying the black glove he used to protect and conceal his prosthetic fingers. Finally, he said without looking up, “...She got sick. It all happened almost a year ago, actually.” He looked back up to you. With a very uncomfortable smile, “...Leia made me come here.”

Of course she had. You ought to have known he’d never show up to a place like this by choice. “I’m glad she did,” you said. “You shouldn’t have to go through this alone.”

He shrugged again, and then chuckled. “I’m not allowed to smoke in here, am I?”

He was still smoking? Or perhaps he’d just started again. You were surprised for a second, before realizing that you wouldn’t really have expected anything else. You laughed a bit, too. “No,” you said. “But don’t run off on me quite yet, okay?”

It was both a pleasure and a relief to draw out that lopsided little grin of his which had so endeared you when you were eighteen. It still endeared you now, although you wished it didn’t, because you were at work. (Of course, technically you’d been at work the _first_ time you’d met him as well...)

“I won’t,” he said. Then his smile faded as he mused offhandedly, “I always thought I’d die first.”

Anyone would have, between his drinking (did he still do that, too?) and his emotional volatility, but you certainly didn’t say so. You ventured instead, “...How have you been coping with it? Your loss, I mean?”

He looked away. “I’m told I haven’t been.” 

That didn’t surprise you, either. “What do _you_ think?”

He looked a bit more uncomfortable, suddenly. “I miss her,” he said. “I think I’m acting like somebody who misses someone.”

You understood. Partly, you understood because of Anakin: He’d broken things off with you so suddenly all those years ago to go back to his family. After the intimacy you felt you’d built with him, being without him all of a sudden was like having cold water poured over your head. It had been a difficult adjustment, and you’d only had him for a few months.

You knew he’d had decades to get used to having Padmé around; if not always by his side, then at least in his periphery. You wondered if they’d really repaired their relationship after what the two of you had done together; guessed that they must have, or Anakin would likely not be here right now.

Very gently, you asked, “What does somebody who misses someone act like, Anakin?” 

You were used to clients not being entirely ready to speak with you, especially when you met with them for the first time. You also knew, though, that the person sitting in front of you right now had always had a particularly difficult time speaking about how he felt in detail. At least, that’s how you had known him.

“Like an asshole, I guess,” he said.

You did smile at that, because it sounded so very much like something he would say. It really was nice to see him. _This isn’t about it being nice to see him; it’s your job to help him._

“You’re not an asshole, you know,” you reminded him. You’d never known him to think much of himself, really— and you’d always been aware that his family was his primary source of what pride and self-assuredness he did posses. You remembered him displaying a near-arrogant level of confidence, once in a while— but those moments had always seemed like shadows of someone he used to be long before he met you.

“Leia seems to think I am,” he said under his breath. Then, “She wants me to calm down.”

“...You seem calm to me,” you observed. “What do you think she means?”

He shrugged again. “I think she means I seem pissed off all the time.”

“Are you?”

He nodded. “I am.”

“Why?”

You saw that anger of his overtake him briefly; then he said plainly, “It’s not fair.” 

You wanted to point out that he was in nearly fifty as opposed to in his teens when he said that, but it would have been both undiplomatic, and too harsh. And really, it _wasn’t_ fair— losing someone that way was never fair, especially someone you had thought you couldn’t live without.

“You’re right,” you confirmed. “It’s really not.”

Anger switched quickly back to melancholy, which was common, and he averted his gaze. As he looked down at the carpet, he continued, “I don’t know what to do with myself, now. It’s...” He hesitated; sighed, “...Well, it’s a lot like the last time I went without her,” he finished, with a hint of what sounded like embarrassment in his voice. The last time he’d gone without her for any length of time— that you were aware of— was when you’d first met him. 

He’d been distant from her for a while, you knew, when you’d begun seeing each other behind her back.

Maybe you really weren’t the right person for him to talk to about this— but you’d bring that up at the end of the session. Not right now.

“It’s different this time, though,” you said gently. “It feels like there’s not much you can do to change it, doesn’t it?”

He smiled to himself. “It felt like that last time.” Then his smile left him and he shook his head; acknowledged, “This is... definitely worse.”

“I’m sorry, Anakin,” you said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

He looked at you. “I’d be lying if I said I was happy to be here,” he stated plainly. “Since I _am_ here, though... well, I’m at least glad I ended up talking to you.”

You looked down at the floor, now. Stupid butterflies— they hadn’t done this in a very long time. Once you resumed eye contact with him, “I’m glad you don’t mind— because you could just as easily have felt the opposite.” You smiled; tried not to give him a chance to respond to that by adding, “I know how much she meant to you, Anakin. But you’re going to be alright, you know.”

He laughed at that. “I’m always alright.”

That was familiar. “If you were, Leia wouldn’t have made you come here, would she?”

He looked annoyed. “She doesn’t understand,” he said. 

“Do you talk to her often? Does she still live at home?” The twins would have to be about twenty, by now.

“No,” he said as he shook his head. “Luke does— but he bugs me less about this than she does.” He smiled, seemingly out of nowhere. “She’s just being like her mom, but...” he sighed, and let himself trail off before looking back down at the floor.

“It sounds like she cares,” you said.

“She does,” he admitted.

You were both quiet a minute. You realized that you felt nearly as helpless giving Anakin advice now as when you’d been seeing him in secret. Even if you were both comfortable here, you realized, the nature of your old bond might very well make it impossible for you to help him this way.

You didn’t want to tell him that, though— because it might mean he would refuse to come back altogether. You were glad you knew him well enough to understand this about him. You’d have to think a little bit harder about how to proceed with Anakin here, you realized... then, you laughed at yourself, because you ought to have thought a bit harder before proceeding with him last time, too. You hadn’t known any better, though— and he’d always been too intriguing and handsome for his own good.

He smiled back at you. “What?” he asked.

You hadn’t realized you’d laughed aloud. “Nothing,” you said.

He gave you a look. “Nothing?”

You sighed. “I— well, it’s—”

He chuckled. “What, did you miss me or something?”

He’d clearly been joking, but you looked him in the eye and answered immediately, “Yes.” You _had_ missed him. Maybe you’d started missing him less, as time had passed... but, he’d always taken up at least a little bit of room inside your heart. 

He’d meant a lot to you, during a very formative time in your life. You found yourself mildly annoyed with him for not seeming to quite understand that.

He stiffened up visibly; looked away from you again. You tried to read him; to you, he seemed very suddenly frightened. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly in the direction of the carpet. “I thought...” and he trailed off again.

 _Shit._ You realized too late that you should never have answered that question honestly; however, you’d already done it. You definitely couldn’t counsel him— but there was still forty-five minutes left in the session he’d already paid for, today. You hadn’t been trained, precisely, for this kind of encounter.

No one could have ‘trained’ you to see Anakin again, though. Not really.

Very gently— and against your better judgement— you asked, “Did you expect me not to?”

He seemed deeply uneasy, now. “No— well, yes— I mean...” He struggled to find the words; finally just came out with, “I thought you would have forgotten about me.”

You shook your head. “No,” you said.

“I should probably—”

“—No,” you interrupted him. “I’ll get somebody else. I think you need to—”

“Stop,” he said. “It’s alright.” As he stood, “I told Leia this wouldn’t help.”

You stood, too. “I think she’s right, Anakin. Please stay and talk to someo—”

“—The only reason I stayed this long in the first place was because I happened to be talking to you,” he said, not without some frustration.

You gave him a look, this time. “Did _you_ miss _me_?”

You could swear you saw his face redden as he answered somewhat defensively, “Not all the time.” Then, “...I thought about you, sometimes.”

That piqued your curiosity. “When?”

“Whenever I was grateful,” he answered. That seemed to come easily, anyway.

You didn’t quite understand, though. “What?”

He smiled, now, which was a relief. “After you, things got better.”

You were incredulous. “Really?”

He nodded. “It forced us to be honest with each other.” He finally looked you in the eye again. “I’ve been thanking you in my head for a long time. That’s why this is so hard, now. Everything was...” He winced at his own thoughts; appeared to feel the need to rub at his eyes with his left hand. You’d only seen him cry once— twice, maybe. He stopped himself, regained his composure, and finished, “...Perfect. It was perfect.”

You couldn’t imagine how much he missed her. All of a sudden, you were overcome with empathy for him. You were happy— impressed— that they’d apparently been able to repair their relationship. However, you knew that their success in that endeavour was only making it more difficult for him now that she was gone. What had he been doing in the year since she died?

Whatever it was, it was enough to worry his daughter. 

“I’m sorry, Anakin,” you told him again.

He was still standing, but he wasn’t leaving. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. You’d heard him say that to you before— just not recently. It was still charming, which you ought not to have noticed. He shifted very uncomfortably before continuing, “...I’ll sit for a bit, alright? If it’s with you.” He added quickly, “So I can tell Leia I talked to _someone_.” 

You weren’t going to refuse him your time, here— not after he’d gone and asked like that. It might have been inappropriate; however, you reflected that you’d scarcely ever had an ‘appropriate’ interaction with Anakin. One session wouldn’t harm him, or lose you your job— and he needed somebody.

You’d never minded taking care of him when he’d seemed to need it, before— although you’d been fairly ineffective, then. Now, at least, you were a bit better equipped to help him.

So, he sat back down, and you talked— it was nice to sit and talk with him again. It was a bit difficult for both of you at first, but you soon fell into a very familiar rhythm in your conversation. The subject matter was a bit different (although not entirely), and you didn’t have any rum to quell your mutual nervousness. However, by the time your hour was up, it was clear that you’d both become comfortable.

Maybe too comfortable.

“So— I’ll come back next week, then?” He was standing by the door, now. It was still closed. You rose from your seat, too; stepped up closely to him. You tried very hard not come _too_ close... and couldn’t tell whether you’d succeeded or failed, really.

You looked up at him. With palpable regret, “I don’t think it would be—”

He interrupted, “If it’s anyone but you, I don’t think I’m going to bother coming back.”

That was honest. “Anakin...”

“Please?”

You sighed; looked up into his eyes. Even with those extra lines on his face, he was exactly as handsome to you as he’d been any time you had sat next to him on his sofa in his living room... or in his car, where he’d sometimes asked you in this exact way to stay with him just a little longer. Or, for that matter, on the edge of his motel bed, toward the end of your time together. You tried very hard not to think about the end.

You shouldn’t have, but you conceded, “...One more session. But I really shouldn’t—”

 _”Thank you,”_ he interrupted and— he must not have been thinking clearly— reached out with his flesh-and-blood hand to grasp your fingers warmly. 

You maneuvered the apparent gesture of affection into an awkward facsimile of a handshake; hoped he wouldn’t notice your redirection. You couldn’t rightly tell whether or not he did: However, he smiled at you as he left.

You smiled back, and sat down at your desk to begin counting down. You knew you’d do it whether you wanted to or not.

You would see Anakin again in exactly one week’s time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I truly don’t expect anyone to read this, but if you _do_ read it (and enjoy it), then consider it my Valentine to us both. 💐


	2. Alright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence, guys. Eek!

You laughed. Anakin had made you do it, and it was nice, but it only helped to confirm that this was not really helping him— not the way it should. Your feelings for him (those stupid butterflies) rendered your ability to look objectively at his situation virtually ineffective. Besides that, he was fantastic at derailing the discussion when you came upon something he didn’t want to talk about: His coping mechanisms (if he had any); his relationship with Leia. Work, too, seemed a touchy subject for him now, which concerned you— but you didn’t push it, because he was Anakin, and you just wanted to see him smile. That’s all you had wanted for him before, as well.

You knew that meant you were definitely not the right counsellor for him.

It was time for him to leave now, and you’d enjoyed talking to him— you’d even received some insight into his relationship with his wife, and his children. He had gravitated toward telling you wistful stories about when things were better than they seemed to be currently, however— and you should have redirected him now and then, but you had been enjoying the conversation too much.

He stood. You stood, too, and paced carefully toward him. Without wanting to say it, “...I’m going to have to schedule you to see someone else next time, you know.”

He had known that was coming; you could tell, but he still didn’t like hearing it. He shifted uncomfortably. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you said. You thought for a moment. “...I liked talking to you again, though.”

He smiled. “I liked talking to you, too.” Then, he stepped in very closely. You didn’t mind: The door was still closed. You also didn’t move. You did look up, though— partly to see his face; partly so that you wouldn’t begin trying to unbutton his shirt with your eyes. That was a ridiculous thought to be having right now, really, but it lingered despite itself: You had always noticed him that way.

“Will you come back next week anyway?” you asked, before you got too distracted.

“To talk to someone else?” He seemed skeptical.

“Yes,” you confirmed. 

He sighed. 

You didn’t let him begin to argue before starting to near-beg him, “Please, Anakin? I think Leia—”

“—Okay, okay.” He put his hands up in front of himself. “Fine.” He looked like he wanted to say more. He didn’t move, either. 

“Good. Is there anything else...?” You hoped that there was something else, and that there wasn’t at the same time. You definitely wanted to talk to him some more. However, between the loss of his wife and the way the two of you had parted ways the last time, you were conflicted: Part of you thought that the best thing the you could do for each other now was to leave one another alone.

Another part of you, though, was delighted when he finally ventured, “...Can I still talk to you again? ...Somewhere other than here, I mean?”

You knew that must have been difficult for him. You had a sudden flashback: Anakin, in the passenger’s seat of your dad’s old van (he’d scrapped that old thing years ago), looking down at the mat on the floor as he admitted that he couldn’t think of anyone else to call except for you after fighting with his wife. Then, you thought about his time in the military and wondered how many of the men who’d died when he lost his arm had been his friends.

You’d always liked being his friend, aside from everything else you had done with him— and you’d done a lot. Anakin needed a friend; he’d always seemed to need one.

“Okay,” you conceded. Cautiously, “...What did you have in mind?”

He looked as if you’d caught him off-guard. You realized he had expected you to put up more of a fight than that. “Well... uh—”

You realized that the two of you had never actually met anywhere ‘normal’: Just in cars and at that old motel; on benches, and clandestinely in his living room or basement. You helped him out as best you could by suggesting, “Dinner?” but it felt strange.

“...Out?” It must have felt strange to him, too.

“Well, sure. If you want.” You shrugged.

“When...?”

“Later this week?” Any day would be fine, really— just not the weekend. That would have made it feel like a date, and this was not one of those, you thought.

Thankfully, he smiled again. “Okay,” he said.

“I’ll come and get you,” you offered.

“Sure.” He seemed relieved. 

“Still in the same place, right?”

“I am.”

“Okay.”

And he left, but not before giving you his phone number— it was one of very few things about him which seemed to have changed. 

You looked forward to picking him up.

...

“Thanks for coming in,” he told you.

You actually hadn’t intended to go back to Anakin’s house tonight; at least, not beyond dropping him off in front of it. Of course, you’d gone inside with him anyway when you had arrived after dinner: He’d asked if you wanted to; you’d answered affirmatively without thinking. You were still bad at thinking around Anakin.

“I’m glad I did,” you answered, and you were. “But...”

“But what?”

“...I don’t want us to do anything you end up wishing you hadn’t done,” you told him truthfully. It might have been presumptive, but honesty came more easily to you now than it did back when you were eighteen. You were wise to be cautious: You were currently in your old spot on his old sofa, after your non-date. You almost expected headlights to shine in through the window, illuminate the room, and make you both jump... but there were no headlights; not right now. You had sat down opposite each other in the dark, and were simply looking at one another through the dim light. You were fighting a very strong urge to touch him.

He didn’t answer you with words. He just sighed, lifted his right arm very tentatively, and let his leather-clad prosthetic fingers graze the side of your face. You gasped at that— you hadn’t felt it in so long. It was familiar, but it took you off-guard. Did he remember how much you’d enjoyed it? 

Anyone would have enjoyed it, you reflected. 

He stopped; lowered his hand. He looked more past you than at you as he sighed, and seemed to consider something before apologizing. “I’m sorry,” he said. He refocused his gaze on you as he asked a bit suddenly after that, “...Can I be honest with you?”

That made you smile. “Always,” you said, and you meant it.

“I... think I was supposed to find you again,” he confessed. And it was a confession: He didn’t sound as if he wanted to say it.

He hadn’t even been drinking. What was he talking about? “What do you mean, Anakin?”

He laughed again, this time seemingly more at himself than you. He rested his hand on your leg; it felt nice there as well. 

“I’d been dreaming about you, before I saw you,” he said. He seemed embarrassed.

“What?” You’d always made each other say that a lot.

“For weeks before I ended up in your office, I’d been dreaming about you,” he reiterated. Then, he stopped as if to think once more. “...Before then,” he continued a bit more quietly, “all of my dreams were about Padmé.”

The last time the two of you were in the midst of building a connection, he’d admitted to you that he’d only ever been with two women in his life: His wife, and you. It was part of what had made you so sure that you really had been special to one another. You knew him well enough to know that he likely hadn’t added to his very short list of romantic partners in the year’s worth of time between her death and his appointment with you. (That was a bit of a waste, you mused irreverently: He was just as captivating now, physically, as you remembered him being before.)

His dreams were sweet, of course, but dreams about sex were common— and he only really had two people to dream about that way in detail. You’d certainly have come up in his head eventually no matter what, after enough time by himself. You understood that Anakin did not especially like to be alone, in spite of his carefully-cultivated outer hardness.

You were sure you already knew, but you asked anyway, “What do we do together? In your dreams?”

He smiled with a hint of sadness, “Mostly, we just sit together.” His saying that surprised you, and he could tell. “...Sometimes we do other things,” he admitted to you a bit self-consciously. “But mostly, we just sit.” He finished with a hint of one of his shrugs.

“I’ve always liked sitting with you,” you said.

He squeezed your leg with his prosthetic hand, but he didn’t say anything.

You tried, “Is it okay if I just sit with you for a bit right now, then?” 

When you’d been honest with yourself over the years, part of you couldn’t help but feel that you had taken advantage of Anakin at a time when he’d been vulnerable. The twenty-year age gap between the two of you had ceased to mean much given the amount of pain he’d been in then, you realized... and he seemed to be in a similar sort of pain now, too. You didn’t want to repeat what you considered to have been bad behaviour; however, you also did not want to leave.

You wanted Anakin to know that he’d always been more to you than a beautiful body and a handsome face, even if you hadn’t always acted like it when you were a teenager. No matter what you did or didn’t do together now, you felt he deserved that.

Briefly, you wondered if he weren’t just trying to replace his wife; if he wasn’t just latching onto you out of loneliness or fear. Part of you saw a second chance in meeting him again; however, a different part of you was scared it could simply turn into another opportunity for him to cause you pain.

He leaned forward— again, he was hesitant— so that he could place his arms around you. Then, he pulled you in closely. You returned the gesture; were impressed and a little bit jarred by the fact that he seemed to feel just the same as he did before. You put your ear to his chest; listened to his heart. It had always beat a bit too fast; indeed, it did that now, too. 

You enjoyed it anyway, along with his warmth. Anakin had always been warm.

He held you for a while like this, and you held him back. His hands didn’t wander; neither did yours. 

Eventually, he leaned back into the couch. He never had answered your question about just sitting with him, but you supposed he didn’t need to, now. You shifted to rest on him, and he placed his arm back around you as if he knew it was exactly what you wanted him to do. 

Then, you closed your eyes.

You were asleep before you realized how comfortable you’d become.

...

“Dad?”

You opened your eyes before Anakin did. Immediately, though, you knew who you were looking at.

“Luke,” you said, as you sat up hastily from your spot on his father.

“Who are—?” His eyes widened as his memory answered his own question for him, “No!”

Anakin started to wake up, too. After groaning as though in pain, he heaved himself up and opened his eyes. “What time is it?”

“I just got home, dad.” Luke looked as if he might have just come from working a night shift, somewhere. He kicked off his shoes and put down a backpack he’d had slung over his shoulder. “What are you _doing?”_

“Waking up,” said Anakin. He felt around the front pocket of his shirt; pulled out a pack of cigarettes— the same cheap ones he had always smoked. He took one of them out, put it in his mouth, and then retrieved a lighter from his pants.

“Dad, you’re in the living room. That’s gross.”

“You’re an adult now,” Anakin pointed out.

“Mom would be pissed,” Luke countered.

An expression came onto Anakin’s face that made you wish you weren’t sitting between him and his son. You got up from the couch.

“Fine,” and the elder of the two got up after you, walked to the front door, and took his cigarette outside with him. He didn’t say anything to you, or anything more to Luke. 

You turned to face the younger one, then. You found yourself at another momentary loss for words, much like the one Anakin had imposed on you in your office: Luke looked so much like his father that you could scarcely believe it. Between his stern face, icy eyes and wispy, blonde tangles, the two of them looked astonishingly similar. Luke was smaller, though: Slight, like his mother had been; nearly delicate-looking, really. 

You knew better than to think that any child of Anakin’s would be anything approaching delicate, however.

You spoke carefully, “It’s nice to see you, Luke.”

He looked you up and down. “What are you doing here?”

You wouldn’t really have expected him to be happy to see you. You had no idea how your tryst with Anakin had been framed to the children, back then... but there was no way you could blame him for seeing you in a negative light now, no matter what.

“I’m just getting ready to leave,” you said, because that seemed to be the correct answer, as far as Luke was concerned. You began to gather your things and put on your shoes.

“Okay,” he said. He paused before adding tersely, “My dad’s not in a great place right now, you know.”

You stopped. “I know,” you told him.

He gave you a look much like one his own father might have given someone who wasn’t making him especially happy— you knew it, because you’d received it before. He didn’t say anything else, and he didn’t have to.

You turned and went out the front door, as Anakin had.

“I’m sorry,” you said to him, when you got outside. He was looking toward the street, and he didn’t turn to face you.

“Not your fault,” he said as he exhaled a thick, white plume.

You walked up beside him, but he looked away. “Are you okay?” you asked.

He breathed in deeply; exhaled a bit shakily. “I will be,” he said.

You were especially glad that you’d merely held each other, now.

“I’ve got to go home and get ready for work,” you said. You did have to do that, although you’d rather have talked with Anakin for a little bit: Maybe the weekend wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. You hadn’t meant to stay the night... but, then, you hadn’t meant to stay the night ten years before, either.

“Yeah. I should do that, too,” he said, in reference to getting ready for work.

“Do you still design prosthetics?” He hadn’t actually told you one way or the other, yet.

He nodded. “Fewer hours, now. I mostly just show the new guys what to do.”

“It’s nice to have more time to yourself, isn’t it?”

He sighed. “Not since she died.”

“...I’m sorry, Anakin.”

He smiled thinly, and changed the subject. “Can we try this again?”

You thought. What was ‘this’? You’d been adamant to yourself about dinner together not being a date; however, it had certainly ended up looking a lot like one. You might not have shed your clothes, or even kissed one another; however, falling asleep in his arms on the couch had recalled a certain intimacy. It was one which you were a bit ashamed of yourself for having missed. 

You really ought to have moved on from Anakin, you considered.

“Alright,” you said anyhow. What else would you have said? You added, “But I can’t see you in my office anymore— _ever._ ”

He chuckled. “Sounds like a deal to me.” You did hope he would keep his next appointment; go back there to see somebody else. However, you also didn’t feel that this was the time to bring it up again: You anticipated that he was already going have Luke on his case when he got inside. He didn’t need that from you right now, too.

He tossed his smoke to the ground and stepped on it. Finally, he turned to face you.

“I’ll call you, then?”

You thought a moment, and then a small smile crept onto your face. 

“Text me,” you told him. “Like you used to.”

He grinned, which you were relieved to see. 

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll text you.”

You hugged him warmly— which was nice to do freely, you thought with a small amount of very familiar guilt— and turned to get into your car. When you looked back, he’d raised his gloved hand to give you a coy little wave— _his_ coy little wave. 

Those old butterflies that Anakin had so recently brought out of their hibernation rustled about in the pit of your stomach. You started the engine and drove away. 

You hoped he would text you soon.


	3. Hurt

You were sitting at home after work when Anakin did send you a message— the day after his son had discovered you laying together in their living room. 

_i’m sorry about luke._ He didn’t need to be.

_it’s ok. he’s just worried._

_nothing to worry about._

You paused. _really?_

_really._ You weren’t sure what to say after that, so you didn’t say anything right away. Before you could figure something out, though, one more message came through: _let me prove it,_ he offered somewhat unexpectedly. _let me do something for you._

Something like what? You were curious. _what, then?_

 _something nice._

You smiled. He’d never really been able to do anything ‘nice’ for you before, you realized. _when?_

_friday night. just come to my house._

You hesitated. _what about luke?_

_he’ll be at work by the time you get here, and then we’re going to leave._

Leave? _leave?_

 _leave._ Then, _trust me._

You found yourself slightly annoyed with him at that, much as you’d been irritated with him the first time you saw him in your office: Did he not understand that trusting him was not something that should necessarily come naturally to you, now? You were happy to see him, but he still didn’t seem to understand what he’d meant to you when he cast you off. 

And yet...

For all that had been wrong with both him and your relationship back then, he’d always seemed to try his best to make you happy, even if the way he did it had sometimes made you feel sad. It’d been one of those endearing qualities which had made you compromise your own ethics to be with him ten years ago in spite of his wife. It was also a quality he’d apparently retained. You paused again.

 _okay,_ you finally typed out. _see you then._

It was the last either of you heard from one another that evening. You went through your usual routine that night; however, for the first time in a long time, you found that Anakin was overtaking your thoughts completely.

By the time you were ready to sleep, you were as annoyed with yourself as you’d been with him at his plea to ‘trust him’. You were letting him into your heart again too readily, and you knew it. As thoughts of your time together swirled around your head, your mind couldn’t help but wander to the night you’d visited him in his motel room a decade ago, prepared to give everything up for him.

Your dad had told you he was going to kick you out (and stop paying for your education) if you continued to see Anakin; his wife had given him a similar ultimatum regarding his relationship with you. You thought the two of you had been on the same page, but...

_Go home._

It sounded more callous in your memory. You had always been sure he never actually intended to cause you pain— you supposed, now, that he’d been trying to spare you from his own damage; spare his family, too, from the upheaval of losing him to you. You hadn’t quite realized, back then, what a bad state he’d been in.

Bad state or not, though, Anakin _had_ hurt you.

You’d missed him for a long time after that; continued, for a while, to love him pointlessly. Had he actually loved you, too? You’d often wondered. It had taken you a while to get past him; if you were to be entirely honest with yourself, you never really had gotten past him. There’d been others since— but every time, you wound up comparing your intimacy with them to what you believed you had shared with Anakin, or else you thought they were too good to be true— like he had been.

Whatever he’d intended, he ultimately had abandoned you. You were ashamed of the hold he’d apparently kept on you after that... but, then, there had always been something incredibly special about him. It had always been something more than just the way he looked which had pulled you toward him; made you feel the need to reach out and touch him whenever you thought you could.

That was why, you supposed, it was too easy to become absorbed in him again so quickly after reuniting.

You decided that you would try to be more careful this time— you had a lot more perspective at your disposal now, and no matter how intoxicating Anakin somehow still was, you knew that you should use your logic. You’d fallen for him too fast before, and you didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

When you fell asleep that night, though, you ended up dreaming about him anyway— and in your dreams, the two of you did more than simply sit together.

...

“Thank you,” he said. It came out of nowhere. You were in his car this time; you’d just gotten into it after arriving at his house, on Friday, as you had planned. You were about to be on your way to someplace ‘nice’.

“Hm?” You’d been staring at one part or another of the interior of the vehicle. Your dad might have scrapped his van, but Anakin still had his same old car. You’d spent a not-insignificant amount of time sitting in it before, and it was interesting to glance around at the details again, now.

“For doing this,” he told you. “I didn’t think you would.”

Before seeing him with your own eyes again, you wouldn’t have thought so either. “You caught me off-guard,” you admitted. You added, “I’d never have expected to see you somewhere like that,” because you really wouldn’t have.

“I didn’t mean to fuck you up,” he said. Then he smiled because he knew you knew, “...I didn’t even want to be there.”

“I know,” you confirmed. “...It was for your kids, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. It was.”

You smiled, too. “That hasn’t changed,” you pointed out.

“What?”

“You’d do almost anything for them,” you clarified. You hadn’t altogether understood what it had meant, before... but, Anakin’s love for his children had always been one of the things you admired about him most. It was something that had always told you a lot about him; it was part of why you were here right now.

“Oh,” he said. “I have a lot to make up for, I guess.”

“You were always a good dad,” you observed. He had been; or he’d tried, at least: Even from his position in the basement. You could safely guess from what he had told you about repairing his relationship that he’d been invited back upstairs again.

Quietly, “I missed a lot of time with them.” That was probably true, unfortunately.

“They love you,” you said. Clearly Luke did or your presence in their house wouldn’t have upset him. Leia did, too, or else she wouldn’t have cajoled him into seeking out counselling to begin with.

Anakin laughed. “They still don’t know any better.”

You chuckled, too. “You said it to Luke, remember? They’re grown up, now.” You still wanted to reassure him.

He sighed, at that. “They’re really not,” he said. “They’re only a year or two older than you were when we... well...”

You knew what he meant; you spared him by cutting him off, “You’re right. They are.” You then considered— recalled— that when he’d been their age (close to your age, too, when you had first met and fallen in love with him) he’d been married to his wife and recovering from an amputation. You didn’t share a perspective with him on what it meant to be on the cusp of turning twenty: You couldn’t.

He looked over at you. “I’m sorry,” he said. He was emphatic. You started to tell him that it was alright, but he interrupted you, “If someone were to do to one of them now what I did to you back then, I’d end up in jail.” He clenched his fist in response to the anger the thought of it instilled in him, but he continued, “I know I should leave you alone now as just much as I should have then. But when I saw you in your office— _after dreaming about you_ — I thought that, maybe, it meant I was supposed to make things up to you, too.” Then, completely with his eyes, he put forth what you recognized as a silent plea for you to let him try.

You gazed back; scanned his face. You felt acutely aware of how much time had passed since the two of you had last spoken this way. You hadn’t told him anything of any real significance since revealing to him that you’d missed him, during your first meeting. Since then, you’d both mostly just exchanged small-talk, and stories about your time apart. If he’d been scared to delve into your shared past too much, then you had been, too.

It seemed that the time to be a bit more forthcoming with each other had arrived.

“You really hurt me,” you said.

“I didn’t— still don’t— understand how you loved me, then. It didn’t make any sense.” 

“I told you ten years ago: You made it easy.” You had told him more than once. “That’s why it was so painful for so long after I lost you.”

After shifting his body uncomfortably the way he had in your office chair, “...There was a lot I had to do to be okay again, after being that way for so long.” Out of nowhere, he smiled; then, “I wouldn’t have done it without you. But, you deserved better than to watch me do it.”

“Did you love me too, Anakin?” You wanted to hear him say so one way or another, with hindsight at his disposal. Sometimes you were certain he had; other times, you’d doubted it.

“So much it hurt,” he answered without hesitation. “You gave a lot to me, at a time when you probably didn’t have much to give,” he acknowledged. 

“I thought we were going to run away together.” You laughed at yourself after saying it, because it sounded absurd to you now.

He laughed, too. “You weren’t the only one.” You grinned at one another; then he added, “I would have wrecked your life, you know.”

Wryly, “Are you going to wreck it now?”

He looked away a moment; however, he fixed his gaze back on you as he said pointedly, “I’m going to try my best not to— _if_ you’ll let me.”

Were you going to let him? You hadn’t decided as of getting into the car, but now you felt that you were leaning toward giving him another shot. You hadn’t expected him to open up to you this way— and it seemed that he understood what he’d done to you a bit better than you had thought he did.

You hadn’t planned on asking him directly, but it seemed especially important now: “Are you just trying to replace Padmé?” You used her name on purpose.

He flinched, but again he didn’t pause before answering, “No. That’s not it, because it wouldn’t work.” He took a deep breath; then, “If I just wanted _someone_ , this would be a lot easier.”

“Why does it have to be me?”

“I owe you. We both know it.”

“What if I don’t want you to pay me back?”

He smiled coyly. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

That was irritating, but also very much like him. “I am,” you admitted. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean...”

“—Please?” 

You sighed. He appeared genuinely sorry, you considered. Aside from that, this seemed to be very important to him. When you searched your feelings, too, you found that you really didn’t want to stop seeing him again. Not yet, anyway.

You looked him up and down as he sat in the driver’s seat, and in spite of everything (that hadn’t changed, either), you told him, “Okay.” 

It was all you had to say. He started the car with the same unique twist of his body you’d always admired, and began to drive you somewhere ‘nice’.

...

“Grab that one.”

“ _That_ one?”

“No! The other one!”

You laughed, and grabbed the plate you thought Anakin had indicated. It turned out that part of his affinity for the place he’d taken you stemmed from the fact that you didn’t have to speak to anyone to sit down, eat, or pay— it was a unique kind of sushi bar, where the food glided along before a counter on a conveyor belt, and a machine billed you for what you took. He’d driven you downtown to get to it, and the only other people in sight seemed to be other customers.

You had to admit: It was nice. It was also pretty neat.

Also neat was the fact that it had, apparently, always been a sushi restaurant. Anakin told you over dinner that he used to come here with his old Kendo instructors after practice. That was also when he’d been in the army, he said— it had been a very long time since then, though, and he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the place had changed.

By the time it had, however, he’d been working his current job.

“I used to come here to drink after work,” he said offhandedly.

You thought it was as good a time as any to ask, “Do you still do that?”

He chuckled, because he knew what you were getting at. “No,” he said, and he sounded honest. Then, before you could ask him any more, he added, “It hasn’t been a problem for a long time. Okay?”

You thought about the way he’d spoken to you in the car. You believed him.

Before you had time to reflect on it much, you noticed him having grabbed something strange-looking from the conveyor belt.

“What _is_ that?” You leaned away, because you didn’t want to get too close to it.

Anakin set it in front of the two of you and drew in closely to examine it. You looked at it, too, although you didn’t put your face up to it like he did. It was translucent; nearly entirely clear save for its tiny organs. It still had eyes and legs, and little antennae poking out from its head. Resting on ice, it looked more _raw_ than anything else you’d seen go by— and nearly everything that had gone by had been raw. You almost reached out to prod it.

Then, you realized it was moving.

“Evolutionary perfection,” he answered you as its leg twitched.

 _”What?”_

He seemed oddly peaceful (for him, anyway) as he said while continuing to inspect the creature, “It’s a shrimp.” 

“Why is it moving?”

“Because it’s alive.” 

He picked it up with his prosthetic hand; pinched it between the thumb and forefinger. Then, he used his other hand to deftly tear its head off, and shell it.

After that, he ate it.

“Anakin!”

After chewing and swallowing the unfortunate little thing, he smirked. “What?”

“That wasn’t dead!”

He shrugged. “It is now.” When you continued to gape, he waved his hand in the air dismissively and added, “It was drunk anyway— it didn’t feel a thing.”

For some reason, that made you laugh.

He continued, “They dip them in liquor, and put them on ice. They only serve them one at a time, here— most people get scared at the last minute and change their minds about them. You have to eat them fast, so they don’t wake up too much.”

With a bewildered grin, “What the _fuck_ , Anakin?”

He laughed, now. “Trust me, I have a point.”

“What’s your point?”

“The shrimp is perfect.”

You made a face. “I’m not eating one of those.”

He shook his head; smiled, “I didn’t figure you would.” Then, he pushed the tiny crustacean’s ceramic deathbed away, and shifted to lean into you. “What I meant is that shrimp are perfect, as a species.”

You weren’t sure what he was getting at, so you offered him an expression you hoped would encourage him to continue.

He did. 

“For a hundred and ninety million years,” he said, “shrimp have been pretty much exactly like the one that just came out of the kitchen. They haven’t changed, because they haven’t had to. _The shrimp is perfect._ ” Your hand had been resting on the counter; he reached out and placed his own (the one clad in leather) on top of it.

As he looked you in the eye he went on, “You’re just like the shrimp, you know: You haven’t changed in years.” That grin of his— the one you loved so much— spread across his face as he finished, “My point is: That _has_ to be because you were perfect to begin with.”

He waited for you to smile, too, and once you had, he slid off of his stool. He stepped forward, placed his hand (the warm, flesh-and-bone one this time) on your face, and leaned down to kiss you. It felt just like you remembered.

Anakin had not only just eaten a live sea-bug, but he had compared you to one of them, too.

You kissed him back, however, because you very quickly found that you had missed kissing him. 

Besides that, what you’d just witnessed him do was— somehow— more beautifully romantic than anything else you ever could have imagined.

Anakin had always been full of surprises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Closest to live bugs as I could realistically get. 🐛 
> 
> If you didn’t like this chapter, I know for sure I’ve lost you, but do come back next time for something completely different. ❤️


	4. Scars

_”I’m sorry.”_

_”Don’t be.”_

That was what he’d said to you (and you back to him) after he’d kissed you inside the restaurant, although he hadn’t really seemed all that regretful. You had departed the place not long after, and now you were walking back to his car. He was smoking and looking ahead of himself, but he had a smile on his face. Neither of you seemed in a rush.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said, which surprised you a bit. You hesitated.

Finally, “...How old were you? When you met your wife?” You didn’t use her name this time; maybe you shouldn’t have brought her up again at all... however, you and Anakin had been fairly open with one another all evening, his mood seemed good, and you’d always been curious. Besides that, his technique in flirting— while certainly engaging— gave you cause to wonder how long it had been since he had last attempted anything like it.

You were glad to hear him laugh before answering you, “I was fucking _nine.”_

You laughed, too, because you didn’t believe him. “I’m serious,” you said.

“So am I,” he told you as you arrived at his car. He turned to face you, then. Maybe he understood what you were getting at, because he added, “...Am I that bad at this?”

You shook your head. “No— no, that’s... not _exactly_ what I meant.” Then, you thought a moment. “...How did that work, then? Being nine?”

“We _met_ when I was nine, but I didn’t see her for a long time after that.” He sighed, but his smile didn’t leave him. As he walked around to the driver’s side door, “I thought about her every day, but I figured she’d mostly forgotten about me.”

You both got in; settled into your seats. You asked him, “She didn’t forget about you, though, did she?”

He chuckled. “No, she didn’t.” He sat still after that; seemed to be contemplating.

You asked him anyway, “How long had it been?”

“Hm?”

“When you saw her again— how long had it been?”

“Oh— close to ten years.”

You looked at one another silently for a moment; then, Anakin twisted himself around to start the car.

The sound of the engine was jarring enough to prompt you to say, “That’s sweet, you know.” They must not have waited very long to get married, you reflected.

He shrugged before starting to pull out onto the street, “A lot of people thought it was weird. She was a little older than me.”

“What did that matter?” 

This made him laugh again. “It didn’t.”

It made you grin, too. Another thought occurred to you: “Your nickname,” you said. “Is that from when you were little?” You’d never used it before, and you still didn’t say it out loud now. 

“My—? Oh. ‘Ani’?” 

“That’s it,” you confirmed.

“I haven’t heard that in a while,” he said. He sounded a bit more subdued.

“Sorry,” you told him.

“Don’t be,” he answered predictably, although he truly sounded like he meant it.

“I think it suits you.”

“It really doesn’t,” he said. “Or, it hasn’t for a long time.” He was still looking ahead at the road.

You decided, then, to try it out: 

“Ani?” 

He turned his head to glance over in your direction. His expression was charming: Surprised, but very attentive. With the slightest hint of irritation, he shook his head at you, and focused his gaze back out the windshield.

You laughed, this time. “I was right,” you confirmed. “It suits you perfectly.”

“Quiet,” he said dryly. Then, “Where am I taking you, anyway?”

“Home,” you answered. “I’ll give you directions.” 

“Alright,” he said, and you did give him directions. You didn’t speak much more on the way to your apartment, but you did think about other things you might like to ask him, now that it was starting to feel as if you could.

Before, it had always seemed as though one of you had to leave just as you began to settle into one another’s company. You remembered thinking about how you’d never had enough time to ask the questions you wanted to ask him about himself and his past, or tell him things you wanted him to know about the way he made you feel.

Part of that, of course, had been the fact that your physical attraction to him had frequently overridden any desire you might have had to attend to other issues. Another part of it was that you had taken him for granted, then: You thought for certain you would get to keep him for yourself; you had been too young to know any better. You wanted to be angry with him for not having made it all more clear to you back then, but perhaps he hadn’t known, either.

You had retained what you regarded as a very primitive desire to touch him; however, you had mostly resisted it, so far: You wanted to prove to him that he meant more to you than what his body could do for you. Aside from that, the final time you’d been intimate with him had been excruciating: You had both known you wouldn’t be seeing one another again, and you had insisted on having him once more anyway. He’d obliged... because he was Anakin.

Being with him that last time had been like opening a wound— one which had hurt as though you’d been stabbed. Asking him for it was a mistake you had always regretted. You hadn’t known, before then, that emotional pain could manifest itself as a sharp sting; as tangible, physical agony. You also hadn’t known that it could leave scars. Over time you had come to be able to think about most of your relationship with Anakin without wallowing in sadness; however, that last night...

You put it out of your mind, because you always did.

By the time he pulled up in front of your building, you’d relaxed in your seat, and settled into staring between his face and the windshield as you let your mind wander into a different (and nicer) part of your shared past.

“...Is this it?” 

His actual voice injecting itself into your memory made you jump. “What?”

“This— is this where you live?”

You confirmed, “This is it.” Then, “...Thank you, Anakin.”

You looked at one another.

After seeming unsure for a moment, he ventured to ask, “So... that was alright, then?” It was almost as if he were asking you to evaluate his performance in a stage play. It gave you pause.

“It was perfect,” you said, and you weren’t lying; it very nearly had been. “But...”

“...But what?”

Very carefully, because you knew Anakin had the best of intentions (he always, _always_ had the best of intentions, you thought), you told him, “I can see how much you still miss her.” And typically, you could. Tonight he’d been close to ideal; however, you worried it was just a facade. You began to add, “I don’t want you to rush—”

“—I’m not in a rush,” he corrected you quickly. He already knew where you’d been about to go with that, and he wasn’t having any of it. He seemed to search himself for a moment; then, he laughed unexpectedly and said to you, “This is why I used to drink so much.”

“What?” Once again, you weren’t sure what he was getting at.

He shook his head; ran his hand through his hair. “When I saw you again,” he began after appearing to gather his thoughts, “I was _excited_. And not because I’m fucking weird— I was excited because I never thought I’d see you again outside my dreams, _ever_. When I realized that I’d hurt you— that you really hadn’t forgotten— it made me feel like I had to try to do something about it.”

He looked you straight in the eye; continued, “I fucked up, and I’m afraid that if I don’t try to make up for it now, I might never get the opportunity.” His smile turned a bit sad as he finished, “This is what Leia doesn’t understand.”

You were fairly sure you understood, though: Anakin was and always had been someone who felt things deeply, and that quality had not always served him well. You supposed that it was his drinking which had once helped to take the edge off of him; kept him from feeling ‘excited’, or as though he ‘had’ to do things. You’d never really known him, in fact, in the absence of his preferred vice. How much of his embrace of it had been an attempt at sparing others his own vehemence?

When you reflected on it, you realized that nearly everything you’d ever witnessed him do had been either an expression of his emotional intensity, or a very deliberate attempt at keeping it tightly under wraps.

You saw, then, that just _being_ Anakin Skywalker was very likely its own exhausting endeavour. Briefly, you wondered how strongly he must have felt about you back then to have let you bore holes in the heavily-fortified walls he’d set up around his heart. Finally, you considered that it was perfectly natural that he might both very much miss his wife, and be highly motivated to show you a better side of himself than he’d been able to show you before.

“It’s okay,” you told him gently— and it was, for the most part. You were beginning to understand what looked to be fuelling Anakin these days more than you had when you’d first run into him. It made you want to open your heart up to him a little bit more; however, you also didn’t want him spending time with you because he felt guilty, or obligated. You started to say so, but...

“ _I hurt you_ ,” he insisted, somewhat predictably. “You said so yourself. And everything I’ve ever broken, I’ve at least _tried_ to fix.”

“I don’t need fixing, Anakin— I was never broken.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I know that already.”

“What do you mean, then?” 

“I mean _us_ , not you. I want to try to fix what I broke between us.” He looked down at his lap, and fiddled with his hand through his glove. “It shouldn’t have ended that way, alright? We both know it. I’m not an idiot, I promise— I’m not asking for anything more than a chance to give you something. A little bit of myself, if I can, to make up for what you wasted on me.” He said that as if he thought you’d wasted a lot.

“It was never a waste,” you said. 

He laughed. “Thank you for saying that.”

 _”I mean it,”_ you reminded him. 

He smiled, but he was quiet.

You stopped, stared, and contemplated what he’d said to you. Speaking as carefully as you could once more, “...Why don’t you come upstairs with me for a bit?” 

It was an entirely improvised offer.

“What for?” He seemed surprised, although his question came with what looked to be intense curiosity.

“...I don’t know,” you conceded, because you really didn’t. You just knew that you weren’t quite ready to part ways with him tonight; not yet. Then, you added irreverently, “Maybe you’ve been driving too long, and you need to stretch your legs?” 

He appeared to think about that. Finally, with a hint of his smile still on his face, “...Sure. Maybe you’re right.” He looked around at the street outside the car. “Can I park here?”

“If you pull up a few feet.”

“Okay.”

So, Anakin pulled up a few feet.

Then, you both got out, and he followed you upstairs— although neither one of you seemed to be quite sure ‘what for’.

...

“Why did you text me?” 

You near-murmured this. After inviting Anakin into your apartment— and warning him that it was nowhere near as nice as his house— you’d sat down with him on your sofa, because you hadn’t been sure what else to do. This was where you found yourself right now, except you weren’t sitting tensely with him side-by-side: Instead, you were already leaning on him, resting your head on his chest. You were enjoying the rhythm of his heart again; had started, even, to absentmindedly stroke him through his shirt with your thumb. 

It hadn’t taken the two of you much in the way of time or negotiation to assume this position: It was one with which you had both seemed to grow comfortable again very quickly, since reuniting. It was easy to enjoy him this way.

He sounded content— almost sleepy— as he answered, “Because you asked me to.” You realized that he thought you meant the other day.

“I’m talking about in the first place,” you clarified. You didn’t move your body; didn’t cease the gentle motion of your thumb.

“What? You mean...?”

“You thanked me for being nice,” you reminded him. It had been mere minutes after your first time sitting on a sofa together when he’d sent it, in fact. He’d poured you a drink you hadn’t been old enough to have; you’d touched his leg knowing full-well that it was a mistake. Then, his wife had arrived suddenly to collect you, and by the time she had deposited you in your own driveway, Anakin had caused your phone to blink.

“...I remember,” he said, after a brief pause.

“Well... then why?” It was another thing you’d been curious about for a long time; never thought you’d get to ask him directly. You stayed pressed against his chest, but tilted your head up in the hope of catching a glance at his face as he answered. You stopped your thumb, then; let your hand rest on his ribcage.

“I’m not sure what to tell you,” he admitted. “The message meant exactly what it said.”

“Didn’t you think about how I might take it?”

You felt him shrug. “I don’t usually think very much about how people are going to take things.”

“I still don’t get it,” you told him.

He paused, maybe to think. “...What you did for me that night meant enough that I felt like I had to thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” you said. You never had thought you’d been especially nice that night.

“Do you know how long it had been, then, since anyone treated me like that?”

“Like what?”

He sighed. “Like something they weren’t afraid to touch.”

You thought it was a waste back then that his wife had seemed to have neglected him, physically. You hadn’t realized how deeply it had affected him, when you were eighteen. You’d certainly known that placing your hand on his leg, at that time, was wrong... but you could never have truly understood what it meant to him that you did it.

It was part of why you were treading so carefully with him now that you had him back within reach. At the thought of that night, though, you couldn’t help but tighten your grip on him. He breathed in sharply as the tips of your fingers dug into an achingly familiar landscape. How had he not changed? If anything, he felt even harder; more over-wrought than he’d been before. You’d been right in the car, you realized: Being himself was an incredible effort. You admired that— but you’d always admired Anakin.

“I’ve always liked touching you,” you told him.

He laughed quietly; you could feel it through his chest. “Now I’m the one who doesn’t understand,” he said.

You smiled to yourself; he never had quite grasped it. You’d told him he was handsome exactly once, that you could remember: You had argued with him that night; accused him, in fact, of faking a lack of self-awareness in regard to his own attractiveness. He’d become frustrated enough to reveal to you that you were the only person other than his wife he’d ever been intimate with, and the revelation had shocked you. 

It had always seemed to escape him that he was intensely desirable, and in more than one way. The two of you had never given each other much in the way of compliments; you supposed, looking back, that speaking to one another like that too often would have forced you examine your relationship a little more closely. You’d both been scared to do that. 

With this thought in mind, you twisted your body and reached up to touch his face, instead of answering him with words. You cupped his cheek with your palm, first; then you ran your thumb gently across his skin. You relished what felt the same; appreciated, too, what felt a bit different. He was still unmistakably himself: A little rougher around the edges, maybe, but you were beginning to find that exciting— and in spite of your reservations, you were becoming curious as to what else he had or hadn’t altered about himself... inside, and out.

He demonstrated that he hadn’t changed at all in regard to his perception of his appearance, at least, when he drew his mouth into a thin smile and said quietly in response to your touch, “I know— _I’m old.”_

You shook your head and sat up a bit further, so that you could face him. You didn’t move your hand. If he was old now, you thought, then he’d always been old. It had never mattered to you, even when it should have. 

You couldn’t really discern what mattered to you right now: Just that you somehow still wanted to be near Anakin as much as you had ten years ago, and that his newfound motivation to give the best of himself to you was extremely interesting.

As you leaned in very closely, you repeated a phrase you hoped he remembered you using a very long time ago. It had seemed to affect him then; you hoped it might sink in similarly now.

“I don’t care,” you said to him.

He must have remembered, because this time it was his turn to forgo words: He answered you with another kiss, as he wrapped you up in his arms. You ran your fingers the rest of the way down the side of his face as you kissed him back, until you reached his neck. You took your time there; explored anew the tiny, faded pockmarks scarring his skin. They’d fascinated you the first time you’d ever had the opportunity to examine him. You knew now that they were likely the result of hot metal or fuel having sprayed his body indiscriminately, when his arm had been blown off. You sighed into him, because you never thought you’d touch his neck— his scars— again.

You paused, however, when you reached the collar of his shirt. 

He stopped, too; broke your kiss.

“...I lied to you in your office,” he whispered, a bit breathlessly.

“What?” What was he talking about?

“I lied,” he told you again. “I did miss you— I missed you all the time.”

Even now, you were skeptical. “I thought you said everything was perfect after us,” you reminded him.

“Even that couldn’t stop it,” he confessed, and for a moment you saw in his eyes the pain which had haunted him for the portion of his life he’d spent being caught between you and his wife.

Gingerly, you fingered his collar. “What’s it like, Anakin?”

“What do you mean?” He was trembling, but he rested his forehead against yours and closed his eyes as he waited for you to explain.

“I mean, what’s it like to love two people at the same time?”

He repressed a sudden, hearty chortle; retrieved his left arm from around you to touch your face with his hand, and told you in no uncertain terms, “It’s fucking hell.”

You smiled back at him. “I’m sorry.”

He did laugh out loud at you, this time, as he answered,

_”Don’t be.”_


	5. Time *

You’d noticed it when he had stepped into you too closely in your office, but this was the first time you had allowed yourself to consciously enjoy it: Anakin still wore the same cologne. Mixed with his own perfect combination of sweat and soap and smoke, it was as inebriating to you now as it always had been.

It made you say, “I missed you,” against your better judgement as you ran your hand over the exquisite smoothness of his newly-exposed chest. You were still on the sofa in your living room; however, you’d climbed up on Anakin’s lap to face him after he had dared to kiss you again.

You’d just finished unbuttoning the top portion of his shirt; he had already slipped his prosthetic hand deftly up the back of yours. Now he was running a set of cool, smooth mechanical fingers— enticingly wrapped up in his leather glove— along the groove housing your spine. His other hand was buried in the hair at the back of your head, and the warmth of his palm felt incredible there: It always had.

Your ear was very close to his mouth, because you’d been unable to resist kissing those old scars on his neck. You were glad he still seemed to like that. You felt a pleasant chill run down your spine as he whispered back, _”I missed you, too.”_

You took your hand from his chest, and resumed undoing his shirt. Your mind flashed back to the first time you’d ever done this— he’d been scared, then: Nervous about the way you might see him; conflicted about the way he might see you.

You asked him now, “Is this alright?”

The smile on his lips came through in his voice; he answered, “It’s more than alright.”

You pulled back to look at his face anyway, because you had not planned on doing this, or anything like it... and if he’d lied to you about missing you during your first meeting, then he could very well be lying to you right now about this being okay.

“Really?” You asked him, as his shirt fell the rest of the way open, and you planted the tips of your fingers gingerly atop the skin on his stomach. It made him tense up, which was wonderful. He also gasped— and so you raised a hand to touch his face as well.

He still looked content as he said pointedly, “It has to be.”

You shook your head, but you didn’t move your hands. He didn’t move his, either.

“No,” you said, in a voice you hoped was reassuring. “It doesn’t.” You truly couldn’t discern whether he was ready to this— you ought to have been able to get a read on it; however, your feelings for him were too strong. You’d clearly been right about not being able to counsel him; however, you weren’t sure if this was any better.

He looked you in the eye, then. You searched his expression more carefully; thought you could read in it a distinct willingness which mirrored your own. You wanted to simply trust him, but you weren’t entirely sure that you could: Anakin had never been very good at seeing himself.

As gently as you had ever heard him say anything, however (and nearly as if he’d read your mind back in the car), he asked, “Did the last time hurt for you, too?”

You laughed because you were surprised by his apparent intuition, but you answered him with excruciating honesty: “It was like being cut into pieces.”

With a hint of fear— perhaps at the thought of way you might respond— “Does it still hurt that way?”

You confessed, “Sometimes it does.”

That may have been an error, because it gave him cause to answer more confidently, “Then let me try to make it better,” in the same low, husky whisper which had always rendered you helpless against him.

You knew very well that this was happening too soon; however, you were quickly coming to the realization that you had never stopped wanting him this way. Particularly since seeing him again, that last night the two of you had shared in his motel room had haunted you.

It was an old wound which ought to have healed a long time ago; however, it hadn’t: It had always felt raw. Part of the pain was that you genuinely had believed that you would never see Anakin again. Once more, you hadn’t intended on resuming this type of intimacy with him yet; not tonight.

You didn’t notice yourself starting to breathe too hard or too fast until you tried to speak again. Very suddenly— you had actually meant to say something else— you blurted out, 

“Nothing could ever make it better.” 

In spite of the content of your words, though, you began to let your fingertips trail across the exhilarating landscape on which you’d placed them: It was one which had not changed except, apparently, to become somehow more perfect than it had been before.

You felt him slide the thin, rigid ends of his own artificial fingers up your back a bit further in response to your touch.

“Nothing?” He asked this without any discernible intonation.

“Nothing,” you told him.

Very softly— affectionately— he squeezed the handful of your hair he had gathered in his hand. It made you sigh despite yourself as he asked, “Should we stop this, then?”

You pressed your hand into him a bit desperately, after that. Even at close to fifty years of age, his flesh barely yielded to your touch. His physicality, you reflected, had always impressed you; always used to stir your most basal desires. It did a very good job of doing that now as well, so instead of answering his question, you asked back, “How have you not changed, Anakin?”

This caused him to laugh at you and say, “Denial, mostly,” as he turned his lips up into a smirk.

You liked that answer; it made you laugh, too.

Once you were finished, you took a deep breath and said to him, “I don’t want to stop,” because even if nothing could ever possibly fix the last time, maybe this time could at least be a little bit better. 

It might have been faulty logic, but it was all you had... or at least, it was right this second. You hadn’t realized— or maybe hadn’t admitted fully to yourself— the hold Anakin had always maintained on you. You knew that you weren’t eighteen anymore, but being this close to him certainly made you feel like you were: Careless, short-sighted, and insatiably hungry for his touch... and it was _his_ touch, specifically, that you were craving.

Some people might have seen your relationship with him back then as a farce; as the both of you simply having used one another for sex. Even you had thought that now and then, over the years. However, you were truly beginning to understand that to use someone for sex would have been impossible for a person like Anakin: Physical intimacy was far too meaningful, to him, for it to be abused that way.

Someone who could live his whole life apparently only having had the desire for two people wasn’t someone who would use that desire to deliberately hurt you, you realized. You thought again about what the time after leaving you must have been like for him. You were both heartened and saddened by the knowledge that he probably suffered as much as you did in the aftermath of your having fallen in love.

You, of course, never had been quite of the same mind as him in regard to sex: You’d had more than two people that way, and you hadn’t necessarily been in love with every single one of them. To be with Anakin, though, you now had the experience to recognize, had always been something different; something special: It was the essence of something which had absolutely nothing to do with his body, or the way he used it to please you.

You supposed you hadn’t realized that, amongst all of these different considerations, you had started to cry.

He said your name, let go of your hair, and placed his hand on your face instead. He immediately slid his prosthesis out from under your shirt, and replaced it chastely on your arm.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

“What is it?” he asked.

“...It’s nothing,” you lied.

“I think we should stop.”

“No, please—”

“Hey,” he insisted. “I’m done hurting you, okay?”

“It’s not you,” you told him through your tears.

He shifted to sit up as tall as he could without disturbing your position on his lap, drew in closely, and touched his forehead to yours— just as when he’d kissed you. Your hands had fallen from him, by now. He slid his right arm protectively around your shoulder; his left hand remained on your face. His palm had become wet with your tears, and that only made you feel embarrassed. 

“If it’s not me,” he whispered, “then tell me what it is, and I’ll fix it anyway.” This made you think about him putting his jacket over your shoulders in the cold— he’d done that, before. There had been more to it than just the jacket, of course, but it had been one of those times he’d seemed more like a man from a movie than a real person to you. That had been a long time ago, though, and you knew better now than to look at people— even Anakin— like that.

“You can’t fix it,” you said.

He smiled kindly, “Try me.”

You smiled, too, although fresh tears continued to well up in your eyes. You didn’t want to say it, but you didn’t see a way out of this now, short of asking Anakin to leave... and you absolutely did not want Anakin to leave.

You breathed in deeply.

“I love you,” you told him. You said it very quietly.

“What?” Maybe he hadn’t heard you.

 _”I love you,”_ you repeated, just a bit more loudly.

“You...?”

“...I never stopped,” you admitted, with a sniffle you hated yourself for being unable to repress. You’d resigned yourself, before now, to believing that your love for Anakin had been rendered futile forever: A relic of a shared past neither of you could ever get back. Something to be hidden, and to hide from— you thought you’d done a good job of both, but being with him like this was showing you otherwise.

You had once enjoyed being in love with Anakin (even if you shouldn’t have)... but for a long time after he left, you had hated it too.

“You’re right,” he said carefully. “I... can’t fix that.”

“I’m sorry,” you told him again.

“Shh,” he said.

“But—“

“Stop.” Then, “ _I love you, too._ ”

“Please don’t say things like that,” you told him— forgetting for a moment that you were not speaking with a man who simply ‘said’ things.

He reminded you, “I would _never_ just ‘say’ that.”

You drew back to get a good look at his face; as you did, his hand fell from your cheek. You grasped it; squeezed hard.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I know that now.” You paused before adding a bit more quietly, “...I didn’t know it then, though.”

He sighed. “...That was my fault.”

You stared at each other this way for an indiscernible amount of time as you continued to hold onto his hand tightly.

“...Are you going to do it again?” The question was yours; however, even to you it seemed to come from nowhere. It shouldn’t matter to you if he was going to do it again. Given the way you still felt about him, though, you needed to know he wasn’t simply playing a game, or trying to make himself feel better about being alone. You didn’t want Anakin for a limited time. It was premature and selfish, but you needed to know that you had him for as long as you wanted to have him. He’d offered you a ‘bit’ of himself... but if you were going to have him around for any length of time, you needed more than a ‘bit’.

That was the only way, you realized, you could really give him his chance to ‘fix’ things.

“Am I going to do what again?”

 _”Leave,_ ” you said. It should have been obvious. You felt a hint of very old anger rise up within you; how could he not understand? “ _Are you going to leave again?_ Because if you are, I need you to get it over with right now.” 

He looked surprised, but you interpreted his shock at your sudden assertiveness as fear, and that stoked your anger. You didn’t get off of him, but you did straighten your spine; sit up taller. You let go of his hand as you started to continue, “I can’t—”

 _”—You won’t.”_ Somehow, he knew you were going to say that you couldn’t go through it again. If anything had ever sounded like a promise to you, it was that... but, did he mean it?

You asked him directly.

Quietly, but with utmost seriousness, he answered, “I’ll stay until you tell me to leave.” 

You narrowed your eyes at him; replaced both hands, now, on his chest. 

“I’m not going to tell you to leave.” You wanted to gauge his response to that, because of how gravely he’d disappointed you the last time.

He didn’t let you down, now: His fear or shock or whatever it had been seemed to leave him, and a new expression came onto his face. You might have mistaken it for ire, but you had seen determination in Anakin’s eyes before, and you recognized it well enough to know that you were looking at it now.

“Do _you_ mean _that_?” He kept his gaze fixed on you as he asked. It sounded distinctly like a challenge, and it both impressed and emboldened you.

As you pressed your fingers back into the familiar, sinewy vastness of his chest, you leaned forward and said right into his ear, _”Yes.”_

You wanted him— all of him; even the parts he didn’t want to show you— but you weren’t going to let him hurt you again. Not by leaving, anyway.

“Then I’m not going anywhere,” he assured you, as he placed a hand on either side of your waist. From the contrast between his two sets of fingers, to the way the one on his left just barely restrained itself from gripping you too hard, his action only fuelled your hunger... and again, it was a _specific_ hunger; an old void inside of you which only Anakin could fill, whether you liked it or not.

This time, you were the one who kissed him first.

...

Both of you now seemed to be in a rush, but you didn’t care anymore.

You remained atop him, but now without clothes. You were also no longer perched on your sofa, but straddling him in your bed. You had led him to your room wordlessly not long after the apparent challenge you had posed to one another, and he’d followed you in similar silence. Perhaps you were quiet because you both knew what you were doing, and that you were doing it far too quickly... but also that neither of you could have stopped yourselves, even if you’d tried. 

This truly felt like an inevitability, and that was a comfort.

A very long while had passed since you and Anakin had joined in this precise way; however, it seemed that your passion for one another had not at all been quelled by time. Sometimes, back then, you’d been intimate while you had been frustrated or scared; sometimes, mutually deprived. Right now, you felt desperate: Desperate for Anakin himself; desperate to ease the pain of that _other_ last time with him. 

It had inspired, at first, a quick rhythm on your part coupled with forcefulness; however, you didn’t want this to be over too soon. You slowed your hips’ motion, and leaned down toward his face. Once you were close enough, you pressed your lips onto his; then, you snaked your tongue into his mouth, just to feel around. 

He had a new filling in one of his back teeth, and a small chip in another. He tasted about the same, but without a trace of liquor. This distinct absence made you feel proud of him, because you had always loved seeing him at his best— and even when you were eighteen and too-frequently getting drunk _with_ him, you knew that to see him intoxicated was not to see him at his best.

Maybe, now, you would get a few more chances to experience your actual favourite parts of him: Those pieces of his heart he’d hidden from you well, but that you’d only ever needed to glimpse to fall in love with.

He groaned, you sat back up high, and he raised his left hand to stroke your stomach as you began to rock yourself again. He’d taken his prosthesis off along with his clothes; he didn’t need it for this: So, since you could, you ran your fingers down the length of his right bicep, palmed the smooth end of his arm’s remnant, and then let your fingertips glide back up the other side of it until you reached his chest.

He tensed his body; looked up at you through a few stray tendrils of sweaty, amber hair. His eyes hadn’t changed, either: Still the same perfect, hazy blue; still pleading... and still kind, too. His hand had glided down your abdomen and was trailing along the inside of your thigh, now; it made you clench your muscles— all of them— very tightly, and say his name aloud.

You leaned back down to kiss him some more, simply because you had missed his lips so much... but, you didn’t anticipate the effect it would have on him this time: He wrapped his arm around your back when you came down, and pulled you in tightly as he thrust upward with more force than you could ever remember him having used before.

You cried out into his mouth because you hadn’t expected it; he squeezed his eyes shut, and held you against his chest as he gave himself to you completely for the first time in what— now more than ever— felt like far, far too long. Your hands were pressed between the two of you, and you could feel your nails dig into him as the tips of your fingers curled.

When he had finished entirely, you broke your kiss, relaxed your body, and freed your hand to stroke his hair— yet another thing which had hardly changed, save for his having rid himself of a bit of its extra length. You remembered feeling compelled to take scissors to it, at least once before.

Eventually, you slid off of him to lay beside him; however, you left your arm draped around his chest. He was still flat on his back, but he tilted his head to the side to look at you. 

“I thought I’d never do that again,” he said, with a tired hint of your favourite one of his grins.

You thought about what you had been contemplating earlier; wondered if he truly meant that he never thought he’d do that again with _anyone_. You decided to ask him, “What if we hadn’t run into each other?”

He turned his gaze back up toward the ceiling; stared for a moment. He closed his eyes; told you, “I’d have my dreams.” 

You couldn’t tell how revealing that made him feel, really. You happened to be laying on his left side, though, and he wrapped his arm around you when he’d finished saying it. You truly had forgotten how good it felt to lay with him this way, you realized, as you tightened your own hold on him in return.

You weren’t sure what to say, so you said, “I think this is nicer than a dream.”

As sleep began to take him, he answered that with, “It will be if I wake up and we’re both still here.”

You knew what he meant. However, his words still seemed to hint at a certain darkness you remembered from the dim haze of his motel room ten years ago, when you’d been on the cusp of ruining one another’s lives— when there were no good options, and when pain for both of you had been inevitable. 

It contrasted with the hope you felt right now: Hope that you might have uncovered a path leading to a second chance with Anakin; hope that if you worked hard (and stepped carefully) you would be gifted an opportunity to build what you might have built with him before, had your initial timing not been so catastrophic.

Perhaps you hadn’t been so careful tonight, of course... but again, the apparent inevitability of this encounter was immensely comforting. Maybe you had only exchanged with one another a portion of what you each needed to heal from what you’d done to yourselves in the past.

Somewhat counterintuitively, Anakin had often inspired in you a strong sense of optimism. It really never had been his inner damage (or his outer beauty, for that matter) with which you’d fallen in love— it had, instead, been the tiny glances you’d received at what lay underneath those veneers. Those little pieces of his best self were the things which had always made him irresistible to you.

Maybe, in reality, this had happened neither too late, nor too soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Broke my keeping-Anakin’s-clothes-on record with this story by a whole chapter and a bunch of words. Go me. ✌️
> 
> Also, I’m very sick. Send soup.


	6. Never

_come over,_ the text said. 

It was late afternoon on a Friday; not quite evening yet, but you’d already left work for the day.

It had been a bit less than a week since you had both woken up together in your bed at home, as Anakin had hoped. You’d enjoyed spending time with him that way, and it seemed to grant him a sense of relief. The two of you had enjoyed the morning together for a while as though it were something you did all the time; then, he’d left for home. Coupled with the overall trajectory of the previous night, it had been a finer (and earlier) start to repairing your relationship together than anything else you were likely to have imagined.

It really had been an incredible improvement over the last time, back at the motel... and now it seemed he wanted you to come by his house. You didn’t see why not.

 _when?_

_whenever you feel like it._

_sure._ Then, _what for?_ because you were curious about what he would say.

 _i have the house to myself,_ he informed you, which made you smile, even if you didn’t especially like the idea of trying to hide from Luke. You supposed Anakin’s intent was to protect his son, though— so you weren’t going to argue about it, at least not right now.

 _alright,_ you told him. _i’ll come by in a little bit._

 _i might be in the basement,_ he added a minute or two later, _but i’ll leave the front door open. just come in._

 _okay._ He still liked to hang out in the basement?

You felt happy anyway, then— and strangely nostalgic. It had been a long time since you’d walked through the front door to that house freely and unaccompanied. It was nice to be invited back inside of it this way again... even if the circumstances were wildly different. 

You decided you’d head over to see him soon.

...

“Anakin?”

You poked your head in through the front door; called out, but didn’t get an answer. You guessed he must be exactly where he said he’d be— and since you knew very well how to get there yourself, you walked inside to go and find him.

On the way, you glanced around at the interior of the house. The last time you’d seen it in broad daylight, you’d been rushing outside on account of Luke’s unhappiness with your presence; hadn’t had time to take note of anything. When you did look about now, you noticed firstly that not much about it really seemed to have changed.

The rooms had been repainted at some point; some of the décor was different— although that old couch hadn’t changed at all, as you’d experienced your first time back here. The photographs and mementos which had been on display in the living room ten years ago remained about the same, save for a few new ones which had been added over the course of the time you’d been gone.

Anakin hadn’t been lying, by the looks of things— after you, it did seem that they’d been happy. Recent-looking photos of him with his wife caught your attention. Part of you wished you hadn’t ever known her: You had always experienced a measure of guilt about having lied to her; about what you imagined you’d put her family through. On top of it all, it seemed that you and her husband never really had let go of each other.

You halted your thoughts; corrected yourself: He wasn’t her husband anymore; he hadn’t been since she died. You weren’t doing anything inherently wrong by seeing him now that she was gone. Anyway, you thought, if you hadn’t known her, then you’d never have met Anakin to begin with— and you were starting to be very happy that you’d met him again, now; glad to be getting to know him in a way you hadn’t been able to before.

Between Anakin’s belief that you had helped his relationship with her, and your present realization that she’d also done a lot for the one you shared with him, you supposed that you and Padmé actually had a few things to thank each other for.

You made your way to the basement’s entrance the same way you always used to; felt nervous for a moment as you moved to open the door— however, the smell of fresh smoke wafting up the stairs assured you, somewhat oddly, that all was well. You continued on, taking a familiar route down the short hallway at the bottom of the stairs until you reached the door to the room you’d always known as Anakin’s.

It was about halfway open, but you knocked on it anyway as you pushed it open. He’d been sitting at a desk which was pushed up against the back wall, but as soon as he heard you, he turned in his chair and got up to greet you with a smile. Of all the things you had missed about him, you were finding that you might have missed the way he smiled at you the most.

“I’m glad you made it,” he said as he stepped closely to you; wrapped you in an embrace.

“I am too,” you told him, as you linked your arms around his waist in return. “But what are you doing down here?”

He pulled back to look at you. With a tiny hint of feigned offence, “I like it down here.” Then, more earnestly, “It’s still a nice place to work,” which caused you to peer behind him to see the desk he’d been sitting at. Resting atop it was a bionic hand— nearly identical to his own— among a scattered set of impossibly tiny tools, and a small stack of hand-scribbled notes. Set to the side of it all was an ashtray with a cigarette which looked to have been left sitting long enough that it had put itself out.

“What were you working on?” you asked him.

He moved so that you could see the desk a bit better; turned toward it to look along with you. “It’s the same as mine,” he said as he gestured toward the hand on top of it, “but it’s going to be covered with silicone skin.”

“That’s neat,” you said. “Is it for you?”

“Definitely not.”

“Oh?”

He shook his head, “It’s for work— I like the one I have.”

Anakin never had especially liked for things that already worked to change, you thought. Then you thought a bit more, and realized that his black leather glove twinned with the smooth, intricate fingers he’d designed years ago specifically for himself suited him: Suited him much better than a sheath of synthetic skin, really, no matter how perfectly it might match what he’d lost.

“I like it too,” you said, and that was true— you always had. You smiled as well, at the memory of getting tipsy on his rum and grabbing his forearm to steady yourself. You’d done it before you knew that it was made from polycarbonate and steel, rather than flesh and bone. You had been shocked at first, but then intrigued. It was the first time you had ever met him.

He turned away from the desk and back toward you, now. “I think I’ve done enough with the new one for today,” he told you, and he rolled his shoulders; stretched. He was dressed for work, but you still loved to watch him. He paused; mused, “I never thought we’d be down here together at the same time again.”

“Not much has changed about this place,” you observed in return. It looked about the same as it had ten years prior, except with better lighting. The same old, unfinished walls; the same stone floor. Anakin’s dull-green trunk from the military, his punching bag (that was new, at least— you remembered the old one seeming downright ragged), and the bed he used to sleep in alone had all been moved around over time... but, nothing you remembered from before was missing. Not a lot seemed to have been added, either.

You walked over to the bed; it really did look just the way it always had. You laughed quietly as you sat down in a groove you remembered distinctly from the last time you’d been perched on it.

“Even the mattress is the same,” you said.

He shrugged. “I didn’t use it for a long time.” He wouldn’t have had much cause to use it, you thought, if Padmé had invited him back upstairs. You still felt sad about the length of time he’d spent down here by himself— from what you knew, he’d already been staying in the basement for years by the time you met him.

You still found cause to smile. “I’m glad you didn’t,” you told him. You were being honest: You knew he likely would not be the way he was now if he’d not repaired his marriage, back then.

A faraway look came into his eyes as he answered, “I am, too.”

You thought about the photographs upstairs; decided it might be a good time to remind him, “It’s okay to still miss her, you know.”

He sat down on the bed beside you, then.

“I know,” he said.

“If it ever feels like this is moving too fast...” Part of you felt that you really couldn’t be too careful with him, right now. It was the same part that fuelled your residual guilt; the part that made you think you’d proceeded too quickly with him already.

“No. No, it doesn’t,” he assured you, before you could finish. He seemed to think very carefully a moment; then continued, “...I told you how much it meant to me to see you again, didn’t I?”

“You did,” you said, because he had. 

He looked to struggle to gather his thoughts again, and you began to wonder if you shouldn’t have said anything at all. Soon, though— and a bit to your surprise— he went on candidly, “When Padmé died, it felt like a rug had been pulled out from under me. I thought that after everything we went through to rebuild what we had, we’d get more time together with it— but we didn’t.” 

He closed his eyes a moment; seemed to try to shake off, perhaps, the memories of the last of his time with her. When he opened them again, though, he looked at you. “Every single day for an entire year,” he said, “I wandered around lost, because I didn’t know how I was going to live without her. Then, I saw you again.”

You smiled coyly; pointed out, “I thought you said you were just excited to have a shot at making things up to me.”

He laughed softly. “I was— because that’s all I figured you’d let me do, if you let me do anything at all.”

“I can’t believe you thought I’d forgotten about you,” you said, because the idea of that was still incredible to you. Even if you had been too upset with him to see him again after that first day in your office, you would never have forgotten Anakin— ever.

“...I thought you couldn’t really have loved me,” he reminded you reluctantly.

Your smile didn’t leave your face, but you shook your head. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”

He laughed more loudly this time; answered, “I know that _now_.” Then he added emphatically, “That’s why this isn’t too soon— because even though I fucking _hated_ it sometimes, I always loved you, too.”

“I know what you mean,” you told him, because you did— you’d tried to force your feelings for Anakin away as well, but had only ever succeeded in burying them. It had been ineffective, to say the least.

“You really did fuck me up,” he said as he leaned in a bit more closely to you.

“I never meant to, you know.”

He appeared to take his time for a minute; seemed, in fact, to be looking you over carefully from head-to-toe. After that, he said to you with so little inflection that the absence of it came close to jarring you, “It wasn’t something you ever could have helped.”

“...What are you talking about, exactly?” You’d never understood what it was Anakin had seen in you when you were eighteen, really, other than your willingness to touch him. Of course, that willingness had meant a lot, you now realized— but you also knew that couldn’t have been all there was to it. You’d never had the chance to talk this way all that often, before.

He sighed. “I’m not sure how to explain,” he said. He paused; appeared to be thinking very carefully. Slowly, he began, “...Most people fall in love a few different times over the course of their lives, don’t they? Or...” He made a noise indicating frustration; continued, “I don’t know, get crushes, at least? Have... infatuations?” 

He’d begun to feel a bit out of his element in talking about this already, and it showed. 

“Sure,” you said, because generally speaking, he was quite correct about that. But what was he actually getting at?

He shifted. “Well,” he told you, “I... don’t.”

“You don’t...?”

He appeared more uncomfortable now, but looked back up at you and confirmed anyway, “...Never. I told you, I met Padmé when I was nine. She was the only person I ever thought about like that, until...” He trailed off; finished with another shrug as he gestured in your direction.

You thought about the implications of what he’d just told you, coupled with what he’d said before, in your bed. Did he really not feel any sort of attraction to any other people... _ever_? You tried to picture yourself living your entire life that way— it was a difficult image to conjure. 

How badly had you thrown him off back then, simply by capturing his interest?

“So... do people at work, or out on the street ever make you...?”

“No,” he said. “They don’t.”

“Movie stars; celebrities?”

“No.”

“Well, What about por—”

“—No!” He didn’t even let you finish that one.

“Sorry,” you said. You really should have known better.

He shook his head; waved his hand dismissively. “What I’m saying is that before I met you, I wanted _one person_ for thirty years. There had never been anyone else, even in my head.”

You supposed you could see, now, why you had ‘fucked him up’, as he liked to put it.

He’d been propping himself up on the mattress with his left hand, and so you reached out and placed yours atop it as you leaned into him the same way he’d leaned into you.

“I don’t really know what to say,” you told him, because you truly didn’t.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said, as he looked between your hand clasped over his and the expression on your face. “Just _please_ know that I mean it when I say I want this. Alright?”

“I think I understand,” you said; for the most part, you did. He actually seemed to want you because you were yourself. Who else could you possibly be to him, after all, if you’d been on his mind the same way he’d been on yours for the past decade? He might still miss his wife, but he wasn’t stupid or cruel enough to use you to try to replace her.

Part of it left you feeling a bit confused, of course— what Anakin had just described to you was not sexuality as you had ever quite known anyone else to experience it— but who were you to complain about being the sole living focus of his attraction? It certainly helped to clear a few things up for you; gave you a better idea as to who he really was. 

A bit like when he’d told you about how he lost his arm, you felt as though you’d have to do a bit less wondering about Anakin now than you had before. It might have been different, but he’d been honest, and you weren’t about to judge it.

He smiled a bit uneasily. “...So, I guess I _was_ excited to see you because I’m fucking weird.”

“I don’t think you’re weird,” you said. And you didn’t— if anything, his apparently very strong propensity toward exclusivity was charming. Romantic, really, all things considered. Anakin had always had a habit of making you feel special, whether he intended to or not... and right now, he’d certainly succeeded in making you feel that way once again. 

“What _do_ you think?” he asked.

This was when you realized he was likely completely aware of the fact that the way he experienced attraction was a bit outside the norm. You also came to see that this was likely partly why he’d seemed so angry with you, long before, when you’d implied that he made a habit of cheating on his wife. And of course he wasn’t liable to aptly evaluate his own attractiveness if it wasn’t something he typically bothered to admire in nearly anybody else.

“I think I feel like I understand you better,” you said, which was true. You considered very carefully before adding, “...I also think it makes me feel a little afraid of letting you down, though.” Despite its inherent pleasantness, being the absolute, solitary focus of Anakin’s affections seemed a big responsibility— and you did wonder if he understood that.

He must have, because he answered your concern with, “It’s not your job to keep from letting me down, alright?”

That made you squeeze his hand... and squeezing his hand made him lean in to kiss you. It felt a fitting way to end the discussion.

You started to try to recall the last time you’d kissed him on this bed; however, your mind didn’t get very far before you heard a noise— a tapping, maybe— from upstairs.

“Fuck,” said Anakin.

“Was that the front door?” you asked.

He made a face; rose from the bed. “Stay here, okay?”

You wondered why he wanted you to remain in the basement; however, you told him you’d stay put anyhow as you watched him leave the room, and listened to the sound of him ascending the stairs.

You looked back at the bed; saw that there was still a pillow positioned at the head of it. You decided to lay down while you waited for Anakin, because you always used to do that.

As it turned out, he would be gone for several minutes— and either he hadn’t brought his guest into the kitchen, or else your old trick of listening to him through the vent in there only worked one way. (You _always_ used to stand in the kitchen whenever you had the chance, and listen to him sleep— or pace, or cough, or further decimate his punching bag.) You realized this with a pang of shame: It was none of your business, really, but you were curious as to who he might be hiding you from, now that his wife was dead. Anakin had never struck you as someone with an expansive social circle, exactly.

Then it dawned on you that it could very well be Leia up there— and that if Luke had informed her that Anakin had started to spend time with you again, she might be even more unhappy with him now than before he’d shown up in your office. You were glad, then, that you’d parked on the street: She’d never seen your car before; maybe she wouldn’t connect it to her father’s house at all, since it wasn’t in the driveway.

Again, you didn’t want to hide from his children; however, you appreciated that he seemed to want to protect their feelings. You closed your eyes at that thought; continued to wait as you tried to imagine how you would feel in the twins’ position. You also hoped, a bit selfishly, that whomever had taken Anakin from you for the moment would not have him for too long.

Whatever your concerns about the future, after all, what you wanted right now was the simple decadence of having him completely to yourself for a while.

You had a feeling it was something he would understand.


	7. See

“We’ve always been a little at-odds,” explained Anakin as he took a highly-characteristic, very long haul off of his cigarette. 

You were sitting at the table upstairs with him now (he’d come down to the basement in a huff to retrieve you; thrown a few sharp, wordless jabs into his punching bag on the way), and although you knew Luke would have been unhappy to see him smoke in the kitchen, you weren’t about to chide him for doing so.

You’d been correct as to your guess about the identity of his guest: It had been his daughter, Leia, who had wanted to drop off something Luke had left in her car. As you were learning right now, however, even the simplest of interactions between Leia and her father tended to end with the two of them butting heads. From what Anakin was telling you, it had always been a bit like that between them; however, it had become a lot worse since his wife’s death.

“More at-odds than with Luke?” you asked. Luke had always admired his dad when he’d been little. Now, though, they didn’t seem to be getting along especially well, either.

He laughed. “A lot more— ever since they were babies.”

Without considering it too deeply, you smiled at the thought of Anakin with the twins as infants, although it was difficult to generate an actual picture of it in your head. “What was that like?” you asked. “Having two of them?”

His expression darkened a bit. “It was difficult,” was all he said.

You realized that you maybe should have thought a bit more carefully before asking about that. Somehow, you’d nearly forgotten what Anakin had done to his wife while she’d been pregnant with their children... which was ridiculous, really, because he’d done it to you, too. The image of him half-conscious with his hand extended to grasp your neck— or Padmé’s— turned very suddenly, now, into a looming spectre in your mind. You’d only ever been truly frightened of Anakin once, and it had been when he’d hurt you physically. There was no conceivable way you could have put up a fight— you had forgiven him; however, it had also nearly ended your relationship.

“I’m sorry,” you told him anyway... mostly because that’s what you’d always said when he started to get upset. Then, you wondered how he and his wife had come to terms with his having been violent with her: Ten years ago, that incident seemed to have been at the root of a lot of their problems as a couple— and of Anakin’s problems, as a person. 

What you knew of it was that he’d fallen asleep without her, she’d woken him up, and he’d choked her because he thought someone had been trying to kill him. She’d been heavily pregnant at the time, and had nearly died— and on top of that, the twins had been born early as a direct result of their father’s actions. Sometime after, she had confined him (or he’d confined himself; you didn’t actually know) to the basement for the better part of a decade. You knew that his reaction to being jarred awake had stemmed from trauma he’d endured while serving in the military, and although he had never said the words ‘post-traumatic stress’ to you out loud, you knew now that he probably suffered extensively from it. 

As suddenly as the memory of his having harmed you had permeated your mind, you wished you could take back your apology. It wasn’t that you weren’t sorry for what he’d gone through— it was that you knew, now, that you shouldn’t be sorry simply for trying to speak to him. You knew Anakin didn’t especially like to talk; however, you thought for his own sake (not to mention that of your mutual bond) that maybe he ought to try more often. You remembered feeling that way before, too; being too nervous to bring it up with him.

You weren’t nervous now, though— you weren’t eighteen anymore. 

“What made it difficult?” you asked— and you felt a bit as though you’d jumped from a height.

“What are you talking about? You already know,” he said brusquely, and he stubbed out his cigarette in the little plastic ashtray he’d brought upstairs to the kitchen.

“Well,” you said, “I do and I don’t.”

He sighed at that, and got up from the table. He’d made coffee, so he went to pour more of it into his mug, even though his mug hadn’t even been close to empty. It dawned on you that you’d never really pushed him to express himself to you at times like these; you’d always fallen into silence when things between you had become awkward, or difficult— silence, that is, or the nearest bed.

There was no bed in Anakin’s kitchen.

“What do you want to know about it?” he asked from the counter, with what sounded like great reluctance. His back was turned to you. 

There was lots you wanted to know about all kinds of things, but you started with, “How long did you take care of them by yourself?” You knew you’d been much luckier than Padmé in the aftermath of Anakin’s unconscious fear and rage, in that you’d walked away relatively unscathed from his attack on you. (In fact, you reflected, the only two people in the world who likely knew about it were you, and Anakin himself.) She, however, had been hospitalized... which also made you wonder how long it had taken him to realize what he’d been doing, before he let go of her neck.

“It felt like longer than it was,” he said of his time by himself with his babies, still without facing you. You waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

With more frustration evident in your voice than you had intended, “So, how long _was_ that, then?” He was very good at answering questions without actually answering them; you found that it bothered you now more than it used to. 

He finally turned his head; however, he glared at you as he answered angrily through clenched teeth, “Long enough!”

You were taken aback, and your expression must have indicated as much, because his anger switched to near-panic as he began to apologize to you. However, you didn’t want him to panic— or get angry, for that matter. You just wanted to have a conversation with him. You thought that would have to have become easier for him by now.

You decided, very simply, to try again: If he had enough self-awareness to turn off his rage and tell you he was sorry with such haste, then maybe he had enough of it to realize he needed to try a little harder with you right now— particularly given the fact that it was relevant to you. He wasn’t allowed to be sensitive around the fact of what he’d done to Padmé, you thought, since he’d made it your business by doing it to you, too. Even back then, he admitted that he ought to have informed you of the risk that came with waking him, when you started to become close to one another.

As evenly as you could manage, you tried once again, “How long did you have the twins by yourself, Anakin?”

He seemed to understand that you were giving him another chance, here. He was silent a moment; however, soon he turned the rest of the the way toward you, replaced his coffee on the table, and sat down. He seemed to study you (although his face was expressionless) as he retrieved a fresh cigarette from the pack he always kept in his front pocket; lit it.

“Probably about a month,” he said as he exhaled his first drag. Then, he looked down at the sight of it burning between his gloved fingers; added, “Padmé’s parents had them for a little while, first.”

“Because of what you—?”

“—Yes,” he interrupted. He looked more uncomfortable now than you’d seen him in a very long time; more than he’d seemed in the basement earlier. You didn’t take your eyes off of him, and when he looked back up at you, he’d acquired that far-away look of his you’d have known anywhere by now. You didn’t especially want him to shut down on you, though.

“What were they like?” you asked.

_”What?”_

“Luke and Leia. What were they like, when they were babies?” You were curious about their temperaments; whether they’d been close to one another. The more you considered it, the more it seemed you could hardly imagine Anakin alone with two infants for any length of time— and so that piqued your interest, too. Right now, though, he looked as if he were at a loss for words. It occurred to you that, perhaps, he’d never been asked anything about that particular chunk of time in his life. You waited; gave him a minute to consider your question.

Finally, “...They cried a lot.” Since he knew you wanted a bit more than that, he continued, “Luke made a lot of noise, but it was easier to make him happy. Leia didn’t need as much... but, when she did need something, she never seemed to need it from me.”

You tilted your head. “What do you mean by that?”

He smiled in spite of himself. “I mean that even when she was only a few weeks old, nothing I did for her was ever quite right.”

“I think everyone feels like that with new babies.”

“She’s almost twenty now,” he reminded you with a laugh. Then, “It was always hard with her— for me, anyway— and it still is.”

“What makes it different with Luke?”

He shrugged, then. “Now? We say more to each other, even if what we say is sometimes stupid. Padmé always kind of had to push Leia and I together; without her here to do that...” He trailed off; blew some smoke out above his head and watched it swirl around the light for a moment. If his wife had been the one keeping him from drifting too far away from his daughter, then maybe he felt as if he’d lost both of them, now. You knew how much Anakin loved his children.

“I’m sorry,” you said, and this time you didn’t regret saying it.

“It’s alright,” he answered more gently. “It is what it is.”

“...You’re just going to leave it like that, then?” You didn’t want to see him give up on her.

“I went to see you for her, didn’t I?” He was right about that; however...

“...You only came twice, and I know you haven’t been back since,” you told him. If Leia knew that too, of course she wouldn’t be happy with him right now. You failed to consider, at that moment, the impact your renewed relationship with her father was likely having on her impression of him.

“Fuck,” he said, and he shook his head; directed his gaze out the window.

You knew that when Anakin used ‘fuck’ as a sentence all by itself, it typically indicated that he felt misunderstood. You looked down at the table, drank some coffee, and waited for him to say a little more. You figured he would, if you gave him a bit of time.

He didn’t let you down, exactly: As he continued to suck on his cigarette, “Nobody fucking trusts me.”

Maybe they didn’t. You thought you did; however, the last time you’d known him intimately he hadn’t precisely exuded stability. You’d always have trusted him to _mean_ well, but— although it was painful to admit— not always to necessarily do the right thing. Not because he was incompetent, or a bad person, though; quite the opposite. Even when Anakin made mistakes, you were under the distinct impression that those mistakes came from a place of love; if not love, then a strong sense of obligation.

For someone who’d made a career of constructing robotic limbs, you thought somewhat offhandedly, he certainly was emotional. But then, maybe his penchant for fixing things which were tangible was a direct result of his proclivity towards getting worked-up and decimating things that weren’t.

Whatever it was inside of Anakin that had made him succeed at some things, it appeared, had also frequently botched his own efforts at others. First you wished you’d had the perspective to see it before; after that, you tried to empathize with the conflict you knew he must feel from it— especially given the fact that he’d been around a lot longer than you had. Everything you did know about him told you that none of this should be easy for him... yet every day, now, you were realizing how little he’d ever actually shared with you.

Because you were aware of the fact that berating him would only put distance between you, because you hadn’t actually told him so yet, and most of all because it was very true, you said to him simply, “I’m proud of you.”

He responded by wrinkling up his nose as though you’d spat on the table.

“I really am,” you said.

“Stop,” he told you. As he shook his head and put out his cigarette, _”Please_ stop.”

He looked out the window again, and you looked at him. You were both quiet for what felt like a very long time. You had allowed your gaze to begin drifting around the room when you heard a sound; not a familiar one, necessarily. It had come from Anakin, so your eyes travelled back to him.

He was crying.

He was very quiet— and almost motionless, as well— but his natural hand was trembling and there were, in fact, tears running down his face. They got caught up in some of those new lines set into his skin which you found so endearing; slipped down the edge of his tightly-clenched jaw, and then over the old scars on his neck. The sight of it jarred you, because it had been unexpected: You’d only ever seen him cry once or twice.

“Ani?” 

You didn’t know why you used his nickname— you’d never used it before, except for when you had tried it out in his car— but it seemed to come naturally, at that moment. It might still not have felt like yours to use; however, he had been very wrong about it not suiting him: It fit him quite well; better than you had ever actually realized, and better than you expected him to be able to see.

It did catch his attention; he turned his head to look at you upon hearing it, but he didn’t say anything to you yet. If it hadn’t been for the tears sliding down his face, you’d have thought his expression unreadable. You looked at each other.

“What?” he asked, finally. He didn’t ask loudly.

You weren’t sure what to say, now, so you once again settled for telling the truth. “Your kids love you,” you said. “ _Both_ of them. And I know you love them, too.”

“Sometimes it feels like love doesn’t count for all that much,” he said with a hint of old-sounding bitterness. 

That surprised you as much as his tears had, because it seemed so unlike him; also, it hurt you. What were you sitting here with him for, if not because you loved him? You’d asked that question of yourself before as well— when he’d been scared, sad, and drunk in his motel room. You had always sat with him because you loved him; did that not mean anything to him right now?

“You don’t really feel that way,” you told him, because you were positive that he didn’t.

His neutral expression darkened once more, then, as he demanded more loudly, “How the fuck would you know?”

“Because I know you,” you answered, without hesitation. If he was getting angry again, then you were becoming frustrated, too.

“Do you?” he asked. He pulled his shoulders back; seemed to sit up taller.

Maybe there was a lot you didn’t know _about_ him; however, you were fairly sure you knew who he was. He’d always been very plain about that to you, at least.

“I think I do,” you said.

“Then you know I’m a piece of shit,” he answered, as he got up from the table again. 

“You’re not,” you said as you rose after him. He’d gone over to the sink; maybe to be closer to the window, you didn’t know. As you followed him, you continued, “I always used to hate it when you’d say that.”

“It’s always been true.” As when he’d poured that partial coffee he didn’t need, he did not turn to look at you.

“I think it’s an excuse,” you told him. “So you don’t have to do things you know are going to hurt.” This was beginning to feel like another test, for both of you.

His voice broke as he continued to stare outside; he asked you, “Would you slam _your_ head against a brick wall if you didn’t have to?” 

“What are you talking about?”

“Everything I’ve ever done for my family has fucking hurt,” he said. He paused; clenched his fist. He looked for a moment as if he were deciding whether or not he was going to put it through something. Finally, after apparently choosing not to, he shook his head. “I’m sick of hurting.”

“Maybe Leia’s sick of you hurting, too,” you suggested more kindly.

He sighed; seemed to have calmed himself. “She doesn’t understand,” he said, which he’d told you before— and maybe she didn’t. As you’d mused in the basement, perhaps she was so used to seeing her dad bury his feelings that being reminded he had them was frightening to her. Anakin’s feelings tended to be very strong.

You ventured to place your hand on his back, then, because you thought it might help. He tensed significantly, but he didn’t protest; didn’t move.

“I’m sorry I got pissed off,” he told you eventually, as he relaxed his muscles; finally looked over at you. You appreciated the sincerity in his voice. His eyes were still red, but by now he’d ceased shedding tears. After examining you for a moment a bit like he’d done downstairs earlier, a thin smile spread over his face, and he confessed, “It’s been a while, and I think I must have forgotten who I was talking to.”

You left your hand on him; looked down at the floor briefly. “I love you,” you said as your gaze returned to him, “but I feel like I don’t know you very well.”

“I know just what you mean,” he answered.

“...Do you think it would be okay if we got to know each other, then?” You wanted to understand what Leia didn’t; what maybe no one did.

He laughed very softly; then, “...I guess we probably should do that.”

“You said you wanted this,” you reminded him.

He stood up straight; turned away from the sink so that his body was facing yours. As tentatively as you’d done for him the very first time you were ever alone in his kitchen together, he reached out with his right hand. He used those hard, precise digits he knew you loved so much to grasp your own fingers.

“I meant that,” he said solemnly. “But it’s been a long time since I got to know someone.”

You squeezed his hand gently, even though you knew he couldn’t feel it. “It’s okay,” you told him— and ten years ago, you’d have stopped there. Now, however, you added, “But it goes both ways. You need to let me get to know you, too.”

“I keep having to remind myself that you want to.”

“Of course I want to,” you smiled. You did want to— even if it was hard.

He laughed again, more loudly. “Maybe if we get to know each other better,” he grinned back at you, “I’ll understand what the fuck it was you ever saw in me in the first place.”

You set your free hand on his chest, and gazed up at his face; he really was beautiful. You never would have thought you could feel this way about someone you’d barely ever had the time to get to know— someone you’d spent a decade apart from— but here you were. You loved Anakin and loved him intensely, without necessarily having a lot to go on. There were things you didn’t understand about him, and even things you wished he’d change, if only for himself. However, you reflected now that it would have been disingenuous to try to direct him, without the privilege of knowing him more intimately. 

That was something he couldn’t give you, before.

You saw something in his eyes, at that moment, which you couldn’t quite identify, and it made you tighten your grip on his fingers; that grip he could never have felt. You’d been surprised when he’d told you about meeting his wife; about her having imprinted on him so immediately and at such a young age that he had found himself unable to see anyone else that way for the better part of his life. 

But why had that surprised you, really? You remembered back ten years, then; thought once more about the first time you ever saw him. You considered grabbing his arm; his leg. The way he’d laughed, and the way he had waved at you from the bottom of the stairs on your way out of his house. You thought about his text message, and your stupid butterflies, and about how he still made them flutter around inside of you, even when they ought to have been long dead.

You weren’t like Anakin, exactly— no one was. You’d loved people besides him; you’d looked at and touched them, too. However, to see him seeing you right now, you came upon the realization that maybe what he had shared with his wife wasn’t so difficult to understand. You knew, after all, what it meant to love someone for a long time without them even being there; knew what it meant to see them again, and then be so overwhelmed by their presence in your life that all you wanted to do was be with them. You knew Anakin’s reality, because you were living it, too.

You craned upward to kiss him, then, because it was the only thing to do that felt as if it made any sense. He wrapped you up in his natural arm as he continued to flex his opposite bicep; send those little electric pulses generated by his muscles down the wires in his prosthesis so that he could use its fingers to squeeze your hand.

The sheer complexity of the act felt very fitting. The selflessness of it on his part, too (again, he never could have felt it), reminded you of why you were happy to love him like this. He’d always been so much more than what he seemed.

In the process of getting to know one another better, you hoped that you could finally begin to show Ani what you’d always seen in him, because you’d always seen a lot.

Maybe he was in a place, now, where he could begin to see it, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The best Anakin (to me) is _Return Of The Jedi_ Anakin, and to watch that movie back-to-back with _The Phantom Menace_ is a deeply satifying emotional experience.
> 
> ...That thought has nothing to do with this chapter, really; I just can’t think of anywhere more appropriate to share it.
> 
> Thanks for coming!


	8. Here

“Neat!” 

You picked it up without even thinking. Anakin had been rinsing out the coffee pot; you’d wandered over to the foyer, and spotted it beside a bag on the floor. “The last time I saw this,” you called to him, “you were teaching the kids how to use it.” You laughed at yourself; then, “I couldn’t stop staring at you.”

He replaced the pot in its spot on the percolator, and turned to walk over to where you were standing. You were holding a very long, very smooth bamboo sword. As he watched you turn the shinai over in your hands, he smiled and told you, “I know— I remember.”

You could feel your face flush at that.

He continued, “That’s not mine, though. It’s Luke’s.”

“Oh— do you still teach him?”

He laughed, “No, he doesn’t need my help with that anymore.”

“Well, do you still practice?”

He took the sword from you carefully; held it up to the light in the kitchen. His eyes told you he’d gone somewhere else for a moment. As he came back from wherever that was, “...No. Not since Luke really got the hang of it.” Then, with a shrug, “The only reason I ever picked it up again was to show the kids.”

“That’s a shame, you know— it seemed like you were really good at it.” You had seen him use his shinai just a handful of times; however, it had always been a treat to watch him with it. Not just because the sight of him swinging it was attractive (and it was _incredibly_ attractive), but because of the state of mind it seemed to put him in. He might have been doing it primarily for his children, but you knew that he’d still been getting something out of it for himself, too. His mood had frequently been terrible back then; however, it always had seemed a bit better after kendo.

He just smiled politely, and attempted to hand the sword back to you. 

You didn’t take it.

“Here,” he said, as he tried again. “You’d better put it back with the bag; if Luke thinks he’s missing it, he’ll be upset.”

You stopped; looked him over. “Well,” you ventured, “Luke’s not here right this second.”

“So?” He’d lowered his hand by now, but he hadn’t let go of the sword.

“So, I haven’t seen you use one of those in a while.”

“I _haven’t_ used one in a while.”

You were certain, by this point, that he was being deliberately obtuse. “Why not?” 

He gave you a look; tensed up visibly once again. “Because if I’m not teaching Luke, and I can’t compete, I really don’t see the point.”

“It always seemed to make you happy,” you observed.

He paused at that; stayed very tense, but his expression softened as he looked back down at the object in his hand. When he peered back up at you, he seemed vaguely exasperated— but he asked anyway, “...What do you want me to do, then?”

You smiled, “Show me something.”

“Like what?”

“Anything,” you said.

“There’s not enough room in here.”

“The garage is empty, isn’t it?” Your car was on the street; his was in the driveway.

“It is, but—”

“Just for a few minutes, then? Please?” The more you thought about the memory of him swinging that sword around, the more you wanted to refresh it for yourself. You never thought you’d have the chance.

He looked as if he were about to get upset with you yet again; then, he seemed to think better of it. After that, he adjusted his hold on the shinai so that he was gripping it by its handle; stared at it some more.

“...Fine,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.”

He turned in the direction of the garage, then, with his son’s sword in his hand.

Although you knew you were risking a bad reaction from him, you did not try to hide your excitement as you followed along.

...

“Wow!” He was still making you say that; he’d always made you say that. But the last time you’d wanted to say it in response to his having slammed a length of wood into a post wrapped in rags, you’d had to censor yourself for the sake of Luke and Leia.

They weren’t here right now, though: Anakin was doing this just for you.

It was a big garage, so he spun, then; shouted, and nearly knocked the training dummy clear over... which was especially impressive, given the fact that either he or Luke appeared to have mounted it securely to the floor. You were sitting on a very large, old freezer pushed up against a wall; the kind that was shaped like a chest, and which opened from the top. It was the perfect spot to sit and watch the performance you knew you were very lucky to be getting.

It was delightful to watch him hop and strike as he gripped his sword tightly with just his left hand. Even you would have expected him to have slowed down by now, or to at least seem a bit out-of-practise; however, he hadn’t— and he didn’t. Between the way he moved his body and the expression on his face, he somehow seemed even younger at that moment than he’d appeared when you had first met him. 

Aside from letting you watch as he instructed the twins, and making you feel stupid when you had asked him why he couldn’t compete anymore, he’d never revealed all that much to you about what the sport meant to him. As you watched him now, though (without having to worry about how closely you were observing him, or the impression you were making on anyone else with your reaction to his movements), you got the distinct feeling that it meant quite a lot. Or that it once had, at least.

After brutally thrusting the tip of the sword toward what would have been the ragged post’s neck if it had been a person, Anakin stopped. He ran the gloved hand he hadn’t been using— the one he couldn’t use to hold the shinai— over the hair on his head; breathed deeply. The collar of his shirt was wide open, so you could see a fine sheen of sweat coating the skin he’d left exposed to you. It shone in the dim light of the garage; made you stare more intently, if that were possible.

“How long was I at that?” he asked eventually, without looking at you.

You snapped yourself out of your own trance; answered, “I have absolutely no idea.” You didn’t, but you did know that he’d given you a lot more than the ‘few minutes’ he’d promised. 

He rolled his shoulders, and walked over to the edge of the room to lean the sword up against a wall. Then, he made his way over to where you were sitting on the old freezer. You were about eye-level with the bottom of his chest this way, so you leaned back a bit and tilted your head up to examine his face. He was smiling.

“Are you happy now?” he asked wryly.

You grinned at him. “Very happy,” you answered. “When do I get to see you do it again?” It felt brave to ask.

To your relief, he laughed; then he said, “You know I’m not doing it properly, don’t you?”

“Huh?” He’d been perfect, as far as you could tell, although admittedly you didn’t know much about the sport.

“You can’t practice kendo with one hand,” he said matter-of-factly, somehow ignoring that he’d just done exactly that.

Anakin could do just about _anything_ with one hand, you thought: You’d seen him do most of it yourself. You’d always loved his prosthesis because he had built it, and that impressed you; you had even come to find the sight of him without it quite handsome, in its uniqueness. However— except for those big, stupid buttons and useless, shiny cufflinks on his military dress uniform— you’d never actually understood his missing limb to have disadvantaged him in any noticeable way. Not physically, anyhow. You were only realizing now how incredibly naive you’d been, in that regard.

“You looked fantastic to me,” was all you said, for the moment.

“If you say so,” he half-conceded, and he took one last step toward you so that he was right up close to the freezer you’d made into your seat. He stood between your knees, which were hanging off the edge, and looked at you. You waited for him to say something else, but he just gazed.

You looked back at him silently for a minute, too. Then, “...So, like I asked: _When do I get to see you do it again?”_

He scoffed, “You don’t want to see me do that again.”

He always had thought himself such an expert on what everyone else wanted. As with a few other things that you didn’t know enough to be bothered by ten years ago, you found his presumptuousness mildly irritating, now.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” you chided.

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that, because he hesitated.

“...Fine then,” he finally said. He still looked content, but his voice acquired an awkward lilt as he offered, “If you really want to watch me be terrible at something, then I’ll do it for you again sometime. Alright?”

Anakin did not seem to like being told he was good at things; even things for which he showed demonstrable talent. You wished it were easier to compliment him; however, you also felt grateful that he was at least putting up with you doing so right now. 

“I can’t wait,” you said, and you reached out to put your arms around his waist. You pulled him in closely; put your ear to his chest to hear that quick, strong heartbeat whose rhythm you’d have known anywhere. He sighed, and although you couldn’t see for sure, you had a feeling that he was shaking his head at you as he returned your embrace. Because he was close enough now, you wrapped your legs around the backs of his knees; pretended, for a second, that you could hold him in place like that if you wanted to.

Luckily, of course, you didn’t have to try for real— he stayed there and you held each other until an especially sharp breeze drafted in from underneath the garage door, and prompted you to move.

He drew back first; looked down at you. He said, “Let’s go inside,” as he grasped your hand to help you hop off of the freezer.

You answered simply, “Okay,” and squeezed his fingers as you walked back into the house together. 

You felt more comfortable there than you ever had before, although you couldn’t quite pinpoint why that was.

You decided that it didn’t matter— you were just happy to feel that way.

...

“Great,” he said. “Now I’m sweaty.”

You were back in the kitchen, standing by the table. He was using his left hand to unbutton his shirt. He had advised you that he only had to take his opposite arm off for a bit, but you were enjoying the sight of him revealing himself to you anyway.

“I don’t mind a bit of sweat,” you told him. You knew you were staring, but you didn’t really care whether Anakin was aware of it or not.

“You’d better not mind,” he said as he let his shirt fall off of him; deposited it on one of the kitchen chairs. “It’s your fault.”

Because you couldn’t resist, “It’s nothing I haven’t done to you before.”

He only smirked in your direction; started to unwrap the black sheath holding his forearm to his bicep. You took the opportunity to get a good look at all of him at once while he did, because aside from waking up with him in your room after the night you’d spent together, you really hadn’t done so yet. You were admittedly mesmerized at the fact that he seemed to be in better physical condition now at forty-eight than he’d been ten years prior. 

Not that he’d ever been anything but a rigid expanse of hard-earned muscle; however, close to the end of your time together, before, he had begun to worry you. He’d frequently looked a bit too thin, or sometimes very obviously dehydrated. He had also always looked tired, then; he’d nearly always been drinking. You wanted to say that you were proud of him again; however, you’d already gotten away with the compliment you’d given him in the garage, and you didn’t want to push your luck.

As he set his arm down gingerly on the table, you decided against using words just then. Anakin was nice to talk to, and well-spoken when he was in the mood to be so; however, he’d given up enough of that to you tonight, you thought. You were thrilled with him, but you weren’t going to torture him by telling him too many times that he’d impressed you. He had always been more comfortable with showing than with telling anyhow, as far as you knew.

You walked over to him in lieu of words, and placed a hand on his chest. He felt wonderfully warm, and he was, in fact, a bit slick. You made a noise; one you hoped indicated your enthusiastic approval.

“See?” he asked. “Sweaty. Thanks.”

You smiled at that. Then, however, you let your hand trail the rest of the way down his chest; began to trace the incredibly well-defined lines indicating the musculature of his abdomen. 

Finally, he stifled a gasp. Then, “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“You don’t like it when I tell you what I’m trying to tell you,” you said. You didn’t look up at his face yet; just watched your own finger continue to wander toward his belt.

“...It’s that you think I need a shower, isn’t it?”

You lifted your hand from his stomach to swat him in the arm for that. You also tilted your head upward to catch his eye with yours, then. “You feel incredible,” you corrected him, “and every time I get to touch you, it reminds me of how much I missed being able to when I couldn’t.” 

It sounded a bit melodramatic, perhaps, but it was true. There was a lot you hadn’t said to Anakin when you’d wanted to say it, before. The fact that he was incredibly beautiful and that you loved to put your hands on him was something which you had very frequently held back from saying. You didn’t feel like holding back that way anymore.

He seemed to appreciate your candidness, at least. With what sounded like utmost sincerity, he answered you quietly, “Touching you makes me feel that way, too, you know.”

“I had a feeling, but I wasn’t really sure,” you said.

“...What do you want to do, then?” he asked, after a pause. It was getting late, but you certainly didn’t want to go home.

You were silent, too, for a few long moments as you thought. Finally, because you were already being forthcoming, “...I think I’d like to keep touching you for a little bit— maybe until it stops reminding me of not being able to.”

He chuckled, “Aren’t you worried that might take a while?”

“I’m not worried at all,” you said. “I have lots of time.”

“Good— you have time for me to show you what’s upstairs, then.”

“I know what’s up there,” you told him as you both started to walk toward the staircase in an act of unspoken agreement. “There’s a set of bunk beds, and a bathroom with yellow fish painted on the walls.” You added, “...Unless Luke changed those.”

“He hasn’t changed them,” Anakin said. “But I didn’t mean _that_ part of upstairs.”

“Oh? You mean it’s not all bunk beds and cute fish?” You couldn’t help yourself.

“Not entirely,” he smiled in return, as he moved aside so that you could ascend ahead of him. 

“Show me,” you said as you started on your way up; you could hear him following after you. You were going to have to remind yourself not to turn left, you thought.

Aside from being eager to do what you’d told Anakin you wanted to do, you were also curious— because you had, indeed, never seen the part of upstairs which hadn’t primarily been the twins’ domain.

You were very glad, right then, that you hadn’t let him put down that sword.


	9. Dream *

“This really is a lot nicer than the basement,” you said, hoping you didn’t sound altogether too insensitive.

It really was nicer, though. About, in fact, what you’d have expected: The room itself was quite large, and the furniture— while not necessarily ornate— had all likely been expensive. The decor was incredibly simple; however, you got the impression that might not always have been the case. It was a lovely space, yet you somehow had trouble picturing Anakin occupying it by himself on a regular basis.

“It is and is isn’t,” he answered as he stepped into his bedroom after you. He left the door open behind him; except for you two, after all, the house was empty.

As you turned toward him after taking in the space, “Why do you say that?”

He laughed, seemingly at himself. “I don’t mind being alone in the basement,” he said, which made perfect sense: He’d spent a lot of time on his own down there. “Up here, though?” He looked around the room, shook his head, and neglected to finish his own thought out loud.

“I understand,” you said, and you wondered if he’d been sleeping downstairs again recently. Although for a different reason, the thought of it made you as sad now as it had before. Anakin had always deserved better than that basement... even if he didn’t entirely seem to mind being down there. 

After a moment of consideration, you added, “...We don’t have to do this here, okay?” You didn’t want him to think he was obligated to share this with you; not if it wasn’t something he was ready to do yet.

He laughed again, but this time it was at you.

“Are you kidding?” he asked.

“What?” You’d been aiming for tact more than humour, that time.

He stepped over to you swiftly and assertively, then, which struck you because you weren’t exactly used to him exuding confidence. You knew very well that he could— but the fact was that he hadn’t all that often; at least, not during his time with you. He stood before you for a moment with his shoulders drawn back, and his face turned up in the charming remnant of the grin from his laugh.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now,” he said.

“...Really?” You felt you had a responsibility to check.

“Really,” he assured you. “Unless I’m going crazy, and I’m only hallucinating that you’re here.”

You asked him with a smile, “Do you think you might be?” 

He surprised you by appearing to really consider that question. “...It’s a distinct possibility,” he eventually said, and you truly couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.

“Well, I’m here,” you confirmed, and to prove it you placed your hands back on his chest; pressed your fingers onto him. If you hadn’t known better, you might have thought that you were seeing things, yourself— that you were conjuring an especially vivid dream or fantasy. However, for all the fantasizing about Anakin you’d done, you had never imagined being with him in this particular room before. It had seemed improbable; ridiculous— so much so that the thought of it had never even crossed your mind.

You wondered if his dreams had ever taken him here with you, but since it didn’t matter, you didn’t ask. He placed his hand on your hip, slid his fingers up underneath the hem of your shirt, and stroked at the skin there with his thumb. You stifled your own gasp, now, and that made him squeeze you gently before he seemed to at least partially agree, “It definitely _feels_ like you’re here.”

You grasped the edge of your shirt, then, and began to pull it up; he backed away to let you rid yourself of it completely. He’d left you feeling a bit over-dressed. You stepped toward him again, and he put his hand on your back.

“Do you think there’s anything I could do to prove it to you?” You could hardly tell whether you were joking, now, either.

“I’m really not sure,” he said. You felt him finger the clasp of your bra; immediately, you grinned because you knew he was about to undo it— you had not forgotten about that little trick of his. As it did come loose, he backed up again briefly to let you discard it; however, you were wrapped up in his arm once more as soon as it had been dropped to the floor. He asked you, then, “Do you have any ideas?”

“I might have a few,” you answered, and you ran a slow, careful hand down either side of him; made it your business to record with your fingertips every solid ridge and jolting muscle as you passed them over. You could feel and hear his breathing change as he experienced your touch, and you loved that. His body had felt as though it had nearly come to belong to you, before, but you’d been sorely mistaken in your appraisal of ownership, back then. Even now, you found yourself almost afraid of enjoying him too much— irrationally, you feared that if you did, it might cause him to somehow slip from your grasp again.

You weren’t going to have that.

You’d begun to press your lips onto his chest in a series of gentle kisses; however, something made you pause. Very suddenly, you asked into the warmth of his skin, “Can you tell me again, Ani?”

“Tell you what?” He was quiet; almost breathless.

“Tell me you mean this,” you said. It wasn’t that you doubted him; you didn’t, really (if you doubted anything, it was your own shared providence in being here together; however, that was irrational, too). You just needed to hear him say he wanted this again; needed him to assure you that he truly wasn’t going anywhere. You didn’t feel it was too much to request of him, really— especially since you knew your own guarantee to him was implicit in your having asked.

“Look at me,” he told you.

You stopped appreciating his chest for a moment; looked up at his face. 

“Now sit down,” he said next, once he was sure he had your attention.

You did, on the edge of the bed. He surprised you after that by dropping smoothly to his knee in front of you, and staring up intently at your face as he raised his hand to touch it.

“Anakin?”

“Quiet. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Are you _sure_ you’re listening?”

“I’m sure,” you told him.

“I love you,” he said next. “So much more than I owe you, _I love you._ I’ve loved you for a long time, and I know myself well enough to know that I’m not going to stop.” He paused; maybe to wait for you to take that in. Afterward he continued, “I was scared of scaring you— because I know how strange it sounds. But, if you’re asking me to tell you how I really feel, then that’s it. That’s how I really feel.” He smiled; the smile was a bit sad, but it was perfect. “You have me, alright? You’ll have me until you don’t want me anymore.” He seemed to search your face as he stroked it with his thumb the same way he’d stroked the skin just under the hem of your shirt not long ago. Finally, he asked, _”Do you understand, now?”_

You could scarcely remember Anakin ever having said so much to you all at once before. You knew it wasn’t easy for him to do; knew that his need for your rapt attention when he said it was partly so that he would not have to say it again. You respected that— and you appreciated it, too.

“I do,” you said. Then, because you thought you should tell him, “And I’m not scared.” You could feel tears welling in your eyes, but you ignored them.

He chuckled unexpectedly, at that. His eyes might have looked a bit wet again, too; it was hard to tell. Incredulously, “You’re _not_ scared?”

You shook your head. “No. Don’t you remember asking me?”

“Asking you what?”

“How long I’d love you— back in the motel. I think you might have thought I’d stop after a few weeks, or maybe months.”

“Nothing else would have made sense,” he told you.

You didn’t say anything, because he was correct... but, that didn’t seem to matter. You had kept loving him anyway.

He rose to sit next to you on the bed; he sat so that he could place his arm around you. It seemed a protective gesture. Apologetically, he said, “I never could have known that you meant it. Anyway, even if I had...” he trailed off; seemed to shake away a feeling.

You smiled, but you still asked, “I told you. Wasn’t that enough?”

He shook his head. “I’m a pretty slow learner.”

You looked up at him. “Do you believe me now?”

“...Say it for me again,” he said.

“ _I love you_ ,” you answered, as you examined both the beauty and integrity which were so obvious in his eyes.

He stared intently into yours in return; stated calmly, “I believe you.”

You kept on surveying one another’s faces for a while this way; maybe looking for hints of uncertainty, or fear. Again, you saw some sadness in him... but, you’d have expected to. Other than that, there really only seemed to be love— old love; love that had been weathered, maybe... but, yours for him was in similar condition. You weren’t about to judge what he was offering you; you wanted it no matter what it looked like. 

You had no idea what he saw in your eyes, but it must have been something along the same lines, because it made him retrieve his arm from around you and use it to very gently (and entirely wordlessly) press on your shoulder to prompt you to lie back on the bed. 

Once you had, he bent over your midsection— and the button on your pants. He peered up at your face one more time with a smile which finally seemed to have depleted his expression of most of its forlornness. He bared his teeth almost playfully, in fact, before asking you, “Is this alright?”

You grinned at him, then, and nodded; you knew just what he was going to do. Your memory of the last time he’d done it was hazy— something told you that you’d been so drunk you’d fallen asleep before anything came of it; however, it had apparently not exited your mind completely. As you knew he would, he used his front teeth to grasp the edge of the little loop of fabric which held in place the button on your pants. You could feel cool, damp tendrils of his hair which had fallen out of place; they tickled your stomach. He twisted his head, gave a tug, and the button came undone with little resistance, much to your shared delight.

“You can _still_ do that,” you observed, somewhat irreverently.

He laughed as he sat back up, and began to trace his own lines into the skin just below your bellybutton. As you squirmed, and with a little smirk you couldn’t have described using any word other than ‘seductive’, he informed you, “I’m not quite as out-of-practice as I was the last time.”

That made you laugh; then you asked, “What else can you still do?”

“Tell me what you want,” he offered.

You hooked your thumbs into the waist of your pants at that, and began to slide them— along with what you’d been wearing underneath— down to your knees. Then, you kicked them the rest of the way off, and over the edge of the bed. Anakin slid off of the mattress so that he could crawl up between your legs instead: He appeared to have understood your silent request.

You felt his hand take a firm hold of your thigh as he met you exactly where you’d been hoping he would. You gripped the sheets with your own hands very tightly as you revelled in a sensation you thought had been long-lost to time. Absolutely no one could do this the way Anakin could. You weren’t sure if it was an inborn skill, or something which came from his having had an inordinately long time to perfect his technique on a single person... however, that was another thing that really didn’t matter.

What did matter was that you had missed this, and that the longer you allowed him to demonstrate his prowess between your legs, the less distant you felt from the connection you’d shared with him before. 

You must have started to become loud, because he changed what he was doing in a very specific, absolutely incredible way— a way that you remembered, and which made every one of your muscles tense. His name escaped your lips in a halting gasp of ecstasy; he shouted out into you, too, and tightened his grip on your leg dramatically as your writhing became more frenzied.

After seeming to pause a minute to truly appreciate the impact he’d made on you, he slid off of the end of the bed and stood. He was still wearing his own pants, and just as the last time he’d wrenched yours apart with his teeth, he’d now left you feeling under- instead of over-dressed. He looked you over from head-to-toe; looked very content, in fact, as he seemed to take in the sight of you laying atop his bed. It was something he’d not done very many times before; you felt exposed, but not as though you wanted to hide. 

You felt quite the opposite, really.

You’d never had this kind of time with him, after all— even the other night, in your apartment, you had both clearly felt desperate; as though you were in a rush. Tonight, though, things were palpably different. For perhaps the very first instance, you felt as though your time with Anakin belonged solely to the two of you; not to anyone or anything else. Anyway, you loved to stare at him; it made sense that he might like to stare at you, too. 

Finally, you felt the need to say his name, so you did.

He didn’t seem jarred, exactly, but it did look as though you’d prompted him: His hand travelled to his belt, then; he tugged it loose, and proceeded to discard what he’d been wearing on his lower half to the floor, along with your own pants. You grinned, and didn’t care if you looked as hungry as you felt for him, because you knew that he was all for you. Every other possible consideration aside, you only belonged to each other, right now.

He got back onto the bed; crawled right up the length of your body, and suspended himself atop you using that one, incredibly powerful arm of his. The sight of it made blood rush to parts of you that you had thought could not have become more inflamed with your desire for him— except it wasn’t a desire, now; you needed him.

He had just finished telling you that you would have him until you didn’t want him anymore; however, you couldn’t imagine ever not wanting Anakin.

“I need you,” you said without meaning to, as he leaned down to kiss your neck in exactly the way you had always loved for him to do.

You must have sounded apologetic, because he told you very gently, “It’s okay.” Then, with the slightest hint of anxiety, “I need you, too.” He added much more quietly, _”You have to know I need you, too.”_

You knew how difficult that must be for him to say to you, so you respected it; cherished it. The only thing you could think to do in response to it at that moment in time was to reach down between your bodies to grasp him— and you had very much missed grasping him this way.

You’d made him gasp with your touch; he seemed to become lost in it for a moment. You reached up with your other hand in response, gathered some of his hair in it, and gave it a very gentle tug as you squirmed in a way you hoped communicated to Anakin that he was still in possession of something you wanted, and wanted badly.

Again, he seemed to understand: He didn’t waste any more time after that in lowering himself so that he was close enough for you to take it from him. Your reaching down to guide him was a necessary function, when he was atop you: His unique physicality dictated that you take over this particular duty of his right hand. However, it had never felt like a hindrance; now, in fact, it felt as though it enhanced your connection with him.

Maybe it always had, and you’d simply been too young and too rushed to recognize it previously.

You tilted your hips upward; he pressed himself into you in a way that was achingly familiar, and then you began to run your hands up and down his back. He moved exquisitely; more so than you remembered, and perhaps even more so than he had in the garage with that shinai. He would seem to lose himself; speed up, then he would slow down and lean in so that he could kiss you, or whisper something beautiful into your ear. Like you, you thought, he must have wanted to make this last.

It did last; it lasted a while, but as you’d already known, it could not last forever: Eventually, you craned to kiss the sweat from off his chest as you fingered the immovable strength of his perfectly-tensed arm. As you did, he seemed to reach a point beyond which he could no longer maintain control of himself: He made a noise you’d not heard from him in years as you felt his weight crash into you. 

You clawed at both his back and at his arm at the intensity of the sensation, and kissed at his ear as he relaxed his body and nuzzled into your neck in what might have been an act of purely instinctual affection.

He rolled off of you very carefully after an amount of time you would never have been able to discern; made sure to lay on his own right side so that nothing could stop him from using his left hand to continue to touch you. 

You thought you’d have more to say after that; however, you both simply stared at one another quietly; intently. Maybe you’d already said everything you’d needed to say; maybe you were both simply very tired. Whatever it was, though, you fell asleep this way: In the most comfortable silence you’d ever experienced in your life, as close together as you could possibly physically be, and with the image of one another’s faces being the very last thing you each saw before falling into unconsciousness.

It was your turn to worry that you would wake up having discovered that this was all simply a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They earned this, I earned this, and if you’ve read this far, you earned it, too. ❤️


	10. Need

You woke to the sound of voices. There were two of them; one was Anakin’s, and the other, you knew, belonged to his son. You were still wrapped up in the sheets on the bed, but the door to the bedroom was open. Whether you wanted to or not, you could hear their conversation quite clearly. 

You thought about simply getting dressed and going downstairs; however, you became nervous at the thought of the other morning— Luke had reacted badly, and you’d merely been on the couch, that time. Anyway, you felt more as though you were intruding here when Luke was in the house. 

“I thought you were gone until tonight,” you heard Anakin say to him. You could smell both coffee, and the faintest hint of cigarette smoke.

“I just need to grab a few things,” you heard Luke answer. Then, footsteps; followed by, “Where’s my sword, dad?”

“What?”

“My shinai— it’s not here.”

“Oh. It’s in the garage.”

“What did you put it in there for?”

You heard Anakin’s distinct gait; he seemed to have physically retreated from the question without answering it. Luke followed him, by the sound of it.

“Dad?”

Finally, “...Mine wasn’t handy.”

“What were you doing?”

With extreme irritation, “What the fuck are you _supposed_ to do with a fucking shinai?” 

“Relax!” Luke echoed your own thought. “I asked because what you’re supposed to do with it is something I didn’t think you did anymore.”

“I don’t,” Anakin answered simply. The abrasiveness left his voice as quickly as it had entered it, at least.

“Well, you did, if my sword’s in the garage because yours ‘wasn’t handy’.”

“Did you want me to go and get it for you, or...?” Anakin was good at deflection.

You heard Luke sigh in frustration. “No, I’ll get it.” Then, “See you tonight.”

“Alright— bye. Stay out of trouble, okay?”

“Okay.”

You heard the front door open and shut at that, followed by the sound of Anakin lighting a fresh cigarette. You decided to get out of bed.

...

“You’re awake.”

“I am,” you said as you came to the bottom of the stairs. Anakin was not far from the front door. He was wearing both his right arm, and the clothes he’d discarded to the floor the night before; he must have woken to the sound of Luke coming in, you thought.

He smiled at you, which you hadn’t expected given his interaction with his son, and told you, “I was hoping you’d stay in bed for a while.”

You gave him a look, because you didn’t understand. “Why?”

“Because I was going to come back upstairs and wake you myself,” he answered with more than a hint of suggestion.

“Oh!” 

You were taken aback, because although that was a lovely idea, it didn’t seem like something Anakin would normally have suggested. Then again, you realized, you’d never woken with him in this house before and not been in some kind of a panic. Disregarding his having been hostile with Luke, maybe this was what Anakin was like when he wasn’t deeply and immediately troubled by something. Come to think of it, had you ever actually known him _not_ to be bothered that way, by one thing or another? 

“I’m sorry,” you said, although by now you were smiling back at him. Then, more carefully, “...I guess I thought I should probably get dressed.”

He looked embarrassed for a moment. Then, somewhat more resolute as he asked, “You heard that, then?”

“It’s okay,” you assured him, and it was okay; you weren’t upset with Anakin. You were curious, however, so you ventured next, “...Why were you so hard on Luke, though?”

He sighed; cast his eyes downward. “He surprised me.”

“Remind me never to do that, then.”

“You know I can be an asshole.”

“I also know it’s not really you,” you reminded him, and you loved that he didn’t argue; however, he did deflect when he completely shifted the subject by asking you if you were hungry. You decided to take it, because you figured not getting upset at your having challenged his image of himself took a lot of effort. You wanted him to understand how much you appreciated that.

“Sure,” you answered his query. “What were you thinking?”

He looked significantly more pleased all of a sudden, as he turned away from you and started to head back toward the kitchen. He already had his back to you as he answered irreverently, “Something better than a bag of old ham.”

“...Huh?”

As he began to gather cooking utensils, _”Meal, ready to eat_ — it’s ham in a bag, and it’s fucking disgusting, so if you’re smart and no one’s trying to kill you, you go down the road a bit and have this instead.”

“...I’m sorry...?” He’d pretty much completely lost you.

He laughed; at himself, you knew, because you could almost always tell by now. “I forgot who I was talking to again.” He paused what he was doing; looked to think deeply a minute. “I never did tell you very much, did I?”

 _No, Sir, Captain Obvious,_ was what you’d have liked to say; instead, you answered simply, “Not really.” You thought a moment, too; added, “You didn’t exactly have the time.”

He surprised you again by musing out loud, “I’ve felt short on time since I was about ten.” He shook that off, then, and continued more on-track as he resumed his work at the counter, “I learned how to make this in Afghanistan. The guy who taught me didn’t understand why I wanted to know, because I’d already told him I had a wife.”

“Why _did_ you want to know?”

“Because tomatoes and eggs are fucking fantastic like this,” he answered, and he became absorbed in whatever feeling doing this for you was inspiring in him. 

“Do you need any help?” He didn’t look like he did, but you figured you’d ask anyway.

“No,” he said with a laugh, and so you sat down at the table and just watched him, then, because you’d never seen him act quite this way before. You liked it. 

There was no sound in the house, except for that of what he was doing, so you listened, too. You tried to remember the last time someone had cooked for you, and you really couldn’t. As when you’d been eighteen and Anakin had thought to kiss your ankle, of all things, you reflected to yourself that men your own age didn’t express themselves like this— or at least, the ones you’d been with hadn’t; not to you.

You had not considered the age-difference between you and Anakin very seriously before, and the only reason you likely did so now was because you had the time, and were in his presence as well. You’d hardly ever had both of those things at the same time before; you supposed your brain was only taking an opportunity it had been given. You’d already decided that you weren’t going to give him up this time— and after last night, you were feeling especially motivated to hang onto him.

He seemed to feel the same way about you, so what did that actually mean for your future together? You thought about the situation in which he’d found himself recently, and his wife had barely been five years older than him. He was twenty years older than you, and although he looked incredible, you knew he hadn’t exactly treated himself well over the years. Then, you reasoned, all humans were prone to dying: Some of them sooner or later than others, for absolutely no discernible rhyme or reason. 

For all you knew, an airplane could be about to crash into the house— you might have five minutes with Anakin, or fifteen years... or more, or less time than that. There was no way to truly know; somehow, that was an immense comfort.

Children would have been another consideration, but he’d already had them, and you’d never been especially driven toward doing so— you suspected he would have believed himself too old to go through all of that again, anyway, and you might even have agreed. Your mind didn’t linger on that for very long, except to muse about what you’d have done if you’d been catastrophically unlucky, in that regard, ten years prior.

It was likely better that you didn’t have the chance to consider it— Anakin turned to you, then, and you realized that you must have been lost in thoughts of being with him for at least a few minutes: He was setting in front of you a plate of food that looked so pretty you could scarcely believe he’d prepared it so quickly, and seemingly on impulse.

“That’s beautiful,” you said.

“It’s looked the same every time for thirty years,” he smiled, and he sat down across from you with one of his own.

You never, ever thought you’d have found yourself spending quite this kind of morning with him— particularly not in his house.

It might have felt like a dream as much as the previous night had seemed like one, except that in the stark morning light with breakfast permeating your senses, the reality of it was more conspicuous. 

You felt relieved at not having to wonder.

...

Anakin had both surprised and impressed you that morning, and following breakfast you’d found that he was still not quite finished yet. You’d thanked him, risen from the table, and started to rinse your plate in the sink when he approached from behind you. He placed his hands on your waist; used the artificial one of them to toy with the edge of your shirt. 

As he leaned down to kiss the back of your neck, too, he scolded you gently, “Stop that. What are you doing?”

You closed your eyes; took in his touch. “Cleaning up, I think,” you smiled. You weren’t sure what he was up to, really— you might have been if he were anyone else, but again, this still didn’t seem quite like him. You could only recall him ever having been like this one or two other times; somehow it suited him (and you certainly enjoyed it), but you were far from used to it. 

“Don’t,” he told you. “We have all day for that.” 

You decided to ask him, “What’s gotten into you? I expected—”

“I know,” he interrupted gently. “I’m usually a miserable old piece of shit.” You could hear the grin on his face, however, as he moved to bite at your earlobe and add wryly, “ _But_ , you make me happy— do you have any idea how difficult that is?”

You laughed; that was funny, but it was also true. You thought back a little harder to the last time, specifically, you could remember him acting like this. The only reason you were able to pinpoint it in your mind was because it had been the first time he’d told you that he loved you. It had been incredibly bittersweet, but it was also one of your favourite memories of being with him. He’d been fantastic that whole night; with his kids, with you— there’d been no way you could have kept from noticing.

Similarly, now, he was so very different from the way you were used to having him and yet so very much ‘himself’ at the same time that it stood out to you immensely. You said to him, “I wish you’d give yourself a bit more credit than that.”

He stopped kissing and biting; slid his arms around you in an embrace. “I know myself,” he told you.

“I know you too,” you said as you leaned into him. When Anakin wasn’t panicked or angry, he was wonderful to be with— it just happened that he’d had a lot of cause to be panicked and angry when you had first connected with him. Really, though, if he hadn’t been, you’d have had no reason to touch his leg; he’d have had no cause to reach out to you with that text.

He stifled his own laugh, which was kind of him, and asked coyly, “What do you think you know?”

You took a minute to really consider that; you knew Anakin would not interrupt you if you did. You thought about what he’d told you of his life and what you’d seen of it, too. Carefully, because it was a very fresh thought on your part and you weren’t sure how he’d take it, “I think you need to be in love.”

He was quiet at first; finally, “What?” He sounded bemused.

You almost told him simply to forget it; that you didn’t really know what you were talking about, but you had a feeling that you might be onto something. You knew a bit about people who tended to act like Anakin; you certainly weren’t qualified to diagnose him with anything (you were not a doctor, nor was Anakin your patient). But still, if you’d had one of your old psychology textbooks handy enough to flip through, you were realizing right now that you were sure you’d know just where to find him in it.

Because of that, you could deduce that he was likely always going to be a bit hot-headed; a bit more self-deprecating and avoidant than most people would have been comfortable with. You also knew, now, that his apparently singular attachment to you was just as ingrained as he’d told you it was— spurring the realization that, independent of his assurances, he truly meant it when he said he wasn’t going to leave. Suddenly, too, his immediate and long-standing attraction to his wife made a lot more sense: She’d simply been his favourite person; she’d also been fortunate enough to have had the strength to endure it.

Anakin needed someone to endure him.

“I think you need to be in love,” you reiterated.

“Is that a clinical evaluation?” He sounded as if he were getting a bit of a kick out of your (inadvertent; improvised) attempt to analyze him.

“No,” you said. “Not by a long shot.”

“Then what do you mean?” He sounded like he already knew.

“I mean that you seem to be at your best when you feel close to somebody, but that feeling close to people isn’t necessarily easy for you.”

He was quiet again, after that. You waited, but he didn’t say anything for what felt like a while; until finally, “...I think I see what you’re getting at.”

“If you see what I’m getting at, then you understand that I don’t always see you the way you see yourself, right?”

“Right.”

“And I know you try.”

“I’ve always tried,” he said a bit defensively.

“You try harder now, and I think you know it, too.”

He held you a bit more tightly, but he asked, “Can we stop for now?”

You knew he meant that he wanted to end the discussion for the time being, and you were fine with that. Unless that airplane actually was about to crash into the house, you had plenty of time to talk about these things later; anyway, it was prescient of him to stop you politely before he got upset. You already knew Anakin; already knew you wanted to be with him, and his having adapted to a peculiar way of thinking (likely sometime long before you’d been born) was not going to change that.

“Sure, but can I just tell you one more thing?”

“...Alright. What?”

“You were wrong,” you said.

“Wrong about what?”

“Wrong about yourself, on the bench at the school.” The memory had come on very suddenly, but once it had, it was clear in your mind.

“Hm?” You’d both been drunk; maybe he didn’t remember.

“You said that the way I had you then was as good as you were ever going to be.”

“I said that?” He didn’t sound surprised, in spite of asking.

“And that was on a good night,” you confirmed for him. “But— you were wrong, and now you know it.”

You heard him sigh; he might have been frustrated that he couldn’t argue your point. “Thank you,” he said quietly, and that was as good as his having agreed with you, in your mind.

“You see,” you pointed out. “This is why I said I was proud of you.” He wasn’t going to like hearing it, but you wanted to tell him again anyway. 

“Even if I don’t always make it obvious,” he said as he continued to hang onto you, “I really do appreciate that.”

“I know,” you told him. 

After that, you were both quiet. You didn’t wash any dishes; he rested his chin on your head and held you— very tightly, at first, but his grip on you seemed to relax as the moments ticked by. All you could hear now was his breathing, and that quick, even heartbeat you liked.

Eventually, you were the one to suggest, “...Can we go back upstairs for a little bit?”

“Of course we can,” he said, and very slowly, he released you so that you could turn around and finally look at him. As you did, he added, “If that’s what you want to do.”

“It is,” you told him. 

He smiled, then. “I think I’m going to grab a shower,” he ventured. “Do you want me to show you the bathroom without the yellow fish?”

“Please,” you said. Your favourite part of Anakin’s motel room, before, had likely been the shower; there hadn’t been another one you could have used together, then.

He moved aside to let you go first; you did, and the two of you ascended the stairs together once again. It was much like last night, in that you felt more excited than apprehensive; much more comfortable than fearful. 

It was very nice to have time and space that really belonged to you, and you loved feeling as though being with Anakin was the right thing... or, at least, as though it _wasn’t_ the wrong thing, necessarily.

You still felt for him; regretted that he’d had to suffer a loss. But, again, people did tend toward dying— whether they were five or seventy-five; whether they got sick, or got hit by airplanes. You weren’t glad it had happened to Padmé by any means, but her timing had afforded you an incredibly unlikely opportunity to reconnect with somebody in whom you knew she must have seen lots of wonderful things, too.

You were more than happy to take it, and that was because you loved him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally typed out what amounted to an essay to go with this chapter, but meh lol. Reader is totally not qualified to diagnose Ani’s calamitously obvious BPD, but frankly I think she has a touch of it too, so she’d know.
> 
> I love this weird relationship.


	11. Stuck *

The water was hot— likely as hot as either of you could stand it. The shower was big; bigger than one you’d typically see in a person’s house, and its doors were made completely of glass. They were opaque with steam right now, and both you and Anakin had already been entirely soaked by the water streaming generously from above.

Your hands were planted on the wall in front of you; he was standing very closely, pressed up against your back. It was much the same position as the one you’d assumed with him at the counter in the kitchen while you’d talked; however, this felt much more intimate. Since he didn’t have the fabric of your shirt to toy with now (or more than one set of fingers with which to do so), he wrapped his left arm around you and felt his way up and down the front of your body. He went very slowly (presumably because he had the time), and it was all you could do not to cry out when he reached where you liked for him to touch you the most.

He must have known you were stifling your vocalizations; he placed his lips beside your ear and told you, “You _can_ yell, you know.” As if to demonstrate as much, he moved his hand in a way he knew very well would make you shout; when you did, he laughed before finally sinking his teeth into your neck. He didn’t bite _too_ hard, but he did bite hard enough to surprise you... and of course, you yelled again.

When you stopped, you said to him through a grin, “I guess I’m just not used to it yet.”

“You have lots of time to adjust,” he assured you, and then he made you cry out once more. He caught you one-armed as you nearly faltered; added, “Don’t worry— I’ll help you.”

You steadied yourself on the wall again with one hand; used the other to stroke his arm as it held you around your waist. You were the one who laughed this time, “That sounds just fine to me.”

Before you could tell him anything else, he asked you kindly, “Can I make a suggestion right now, then?”

“...Sure,” you said, and you knew you sounded curious.

“Hang onto the pipe— the one going from the shower head to the wall.”

You raised your arms; found it. “This?” you asked.

“That,” he confirmed.

“Are you sure it’ll—?”

“It’ll be fine,” he chuckled, and he sounded quite certain in his evaluation of the thin, metal conduit’s strength. Then, “...Are you hanging on?” 

“Yes,” you told him, albeit with a hint of uncertainty, because you never did quite know what he was going to do when he asked you questions like that. It had always been something you loved about being with him, though— Anakin’s surprises tended toward making you happy. 

Years ago he’d have definitely told you to be quiet; however, now he said to you as he retrieved his hand from around your body, “Shout all you like— _I promise no one will hear you._ ” 

You noted with an odd surge of arousal how terrible that might have sounded in a different context; then, you did shout (loudly, in fact) as he corrected his stance, and used his hand to slide himself straight into you with little warning. He wrapped his arm around you once again after he was comfortably situated, and proceeded to hold onto you tightly. You were glad you’d already been eager for him; otherwise, this surprise of his for you would certainly have hurt.

It didn’t hurt, though: You gasped, tensed, and maintained as firm a grip on that pipe as you were able to as Anakin deftly found his rhythm. He moved very quickly this time, although he didn’t seem frightened or desperate. Quite the opposite, actually; he appeared to you to be excited— and again, you’d scarcely ever seen him excited, prior to reconnecting with him a short while ago.

As you appreciated the feeling of his chest pressing up against your back, the exquisite sensation of his hips striking you from behind, and the hot water flowing between your bodies, you tightened your hold on the line above your head even further. You revelled in listening to him grunt softly into your ear as he worked; while you did, the idea somehow invaded your mind: It truly had been, objectively speaking, a very small amount of time since you had met Anakin again. 

This consideration segued, as you breathed his name in response to his bucking and bravely took one hand off of the pipe to clasp atop his own, into what would likely have seemed to anyone else an incongruent thought: He hadn’t courted his wife very long, either, before they’d apparently promised themselves to one another years before. You’d barely been connected with him again for a couple of weeks, and the two of you seemed to already have made a steadfast decision not to let each other go. It hadn’t exactly been a theme in your life; however, it seemed to have become one in his.

As you enjoyed him presently, you thought about the last time you’d fallen for him: It had been hard and fast then, too. You’d been prepared to give up everything for him within a matter of months; hadn’t thought about the consequences, because they hadn’t mattered in the midst of your feelings for him. You were older this time, and you had more perspective from which to draw, but you still found yourself helplessly attracted to every part of Anakin... and, despite the past, still more than ready to give him nearly anything.

“I love you,” you managed to say aloud, through your own breathing and whimpering. It only seemed to make him clutch you more tightly. As you reinforced your grip on the pipe with one hand and clawed at the sheer strength of his arm with the other, he clenched every one of his own muscles and thrust forward powerfully. 

You relished the familiar, delightful sensation of him giving himself to you; felt his hand start to tremble beneath yours— then, after stifling his own yell, he apologized through the water, the steam, and his own halting breaths, “I’m _still_ sorry.”

“For what?” you asked in a voice which, although it was very much your own, sounded distinctly unfamiliar to you. When was the last time you’d been made to feel quite this way? You backed into him; pressed as hard as you could, because you loved how that felt as much as you loved everything else about him. You could feel his weight start to pull down on you; you didn’t dare let go of that length of steel.

He allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, and then to your arm’s relief, he straightened his posture. He did so slowly; continued to hang onto you. Finally, he answered almost as if he’d read your mind, “For the way I make you feel,” although after saying that he resumed kissing your neck.

“I love the way you make me feel,” you told him, and that was true— especially now. He was easier than ever to love.

“You’re stuck,” he said, as if to correct you.

You could feel the water beginning to wash the both of you away; down your legs, and into the drain. You smiled, “What?” You didn’t know what he was getting at. 

“I know myself,” he said, much as he’d said it the night before. “I won’t let you go— I can’t. _You’re stuck with me._ ” Another kiss to your neck; then he reiterated more quietly, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry for that.” You tried not to sound as though you were scolding him. “I told you what I wanted from you, didn’t I?” You’d wanted a promise, and he’d given it to you.

“You did,” he confirmed.

“Then don’t tell me you’re sorry,” you said. “Because for as long as you stay, you don’t have to be.” 

He buried his face in your neck entirely at that; he might have been crying, but you’d never have been able to tell, so you didn’t hazard a guess. You had each other now; it didn’t matter. He didn’t say anything, so you smiled, and finally let go of the pipe. 

You used your newly-freed hand to reach over your shoulder and touch his hair as you informed him, “I couldn’t leave you either, even if I thought I should.” You added, “It’s always been that way.” And it really had— you’d never, ever _chosen_ to be away from Anakin.

In any other relationship, you thought, admitting something to that effect would have been a grave strategic error... but, just as you’d never elected to leave him, you’d also never thought of your bond with Anakin in terms of strategy.

“Are you telling me that I’m stuck with you, too?” he asked. He sounded hopeful.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” you answered, and although you didn’t really see it as being stuck, you did understand what he meant.

“Thank you,” he said.

After that, you stood mired in comfortable silence together, until the water started to run cold, and you had to get out. 

...

“You fell asleep,” teased Anakin gently as you opened your eyes. You were back in his bed; he was laying beside you. You were both in the same state of undress you’d been in when you left the shower. Your hair was still a bit damp, and it remained bright outside, but you couldn’t tell how many hours had passed.

“What time is it?” you asked. 

“Late afternoon,” he told you.

That surprised you— you’d already slept nearly a full night, and had barely been awake for an hour in the morning prior to that shower. You smiled, “Then you fell asleep, too.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. Then he was quiet for a minute; lifted his hand to touch your face. Finally, “...Do you have to go home tonight?”

You hadn’t really registered that you’d been here an entire day, now: Somehow it felt as though you’d been here forever, while at the same time as if you’d only just arrived. However it felt, though, it was still only Saturday— there was no real reason for you to leave yet, if you didn’t want to. 

“No,” you told him. Then, so he wouldn’t have to ask, “I can stay.”

He smiled. “Good.” Then, he kissed you. 

When he pulled back, you said, “Thank you,” because you couldn’t think of a more effective way to tell him that you loved being here with him.

“Don’t thank me,” he insisted. Then he reminded you, “You’re stuck.”

You appreciated being able to witness the look on his face as you heard him say that: There was the faint suggestion of that smile still tugging at his mouth, but you could see remorse in his eyes, too. You reached out with your hand to push a damp strand of hair away from his forehead; reminded him in return, “So are you.”

You stared at one another for a little while after that. Eventually you did get out of bed; however, that didn’t happen until you’d managed to get tangled up in each other again— you loved being tangled up with Anakin.

It felt fantastic to have the luxury of time together.

...

“What was that?” you asked. 

You’d gone back down to the basement when Anakin realized he hadn’t put away his things the night before, and you’d both gotten caught up looking at the work he’d been doing. He had ended up in his chair at the desk; you’d been leaning over his shoulder watching him play with his tools when you had (much like the previous evening) heard a noise from upstairs.

“Shit,” he said, also just like before.

“Hm?”

“Luke. I forgot— I’m sorry.”

You’d heard their conversation that morning, so you must have forgotten, too. Anakin had made it easy to forget. “I can go home,” you offered.

“No,” he said. “He’s going to have to get used to it at some point, isn’t he?”

You supposed he was, although you really hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. “You’re right,” you told him. “...Do we go upstairs, then?” 

Anakin smiled. “In a few minutes. Let him settle in.” He started, at that point, to do what he’d come downstairs with the intention of doing in the first place, prior to your both having become distracted.

As he put away the tools he’d been using, you asked, “Have you talked about it with him yet?” You were curious as to whether he had actually addressed his son’s objection to your relationship.

Anakin didn’t meet your gaze as he answered simply, “A bit.”

“What does that mean?”

He sighed, then, and stopped what he was doing. He looked up at you from his place in his chair. “Why?” he asked.

You gave him a look. “Because I want to know what I’m walking into.”

He thought briefly before conceding, “That’s fair.” Then, after another pause, “...I just don’t want you worrying about what he thinks, alright? It’s not your job; I can manage him.”

“I appreciate that,” you said, and you did. “But— what _does_ he think?” 

Anakin laughed. “He thinks you’re taking me for a ride, okay?” 

He said it as though he were afraid it might hurt your feelings to hear it, but you already had an idea that Luke— and likely his sister, too— believed exactly that. You might have believed it, too, if you hadn’t been in a position to know otherwise. Again, you hadn’t ever taken your age difference with Anakin into serious consideration, but that didn’t mean nobody else did. Besides, you still didn’t know how they had come to view your tryst with their father in the time immediately after you’d separated from him. You assumed, of course, that they’d been immensely unhappy with the emotional upheaval you’d caused their family at the time... and you certainly couldn’t blame them, in the event that they’d held onto that sentiment.

“I’d probably think the same thing,” you said, “If I were looking at it from his perspective.”

As he got up from his chair, Anakin began his explanation carefully: “Leia was furious with me, after I came home from the motel. Maybe more than her mom was.” He looked up at the ceiling as if he could see his son through it; felt at his pocket for his cigarettes, but didn’t take them out. “Luke, though?” He sighed; hesitated before looking you in the eye and informing you, “The way he saw it, everything that happened was entirely your fault.”

It wasn’t nice to hear, but you understood it. 

“That’s okay,” you said. There wasn’t much you could do about it, after all.

“It’s not,” said Anakin. “He never, ever let me take responsibility for it— he always blamed you, until enough time had passed that we just stopped talking about it.” He finally did take out those cigarettes. “By the time that happened, things were better— _I_ was better— and I guess I figured he’d just let it go, eventually.”

“It sounds like neither of them did,” you observed.

“It was better before Padmé died,” he told you. He seemed embarrassed to do so, but he added anyhow, “...I don’t think either of them entirely understood what was wrong with me, before they found out about us. Leia knew more than Luke, but not _that_ much more. Everything sort of came to a head after I left you, and to them, it must have seemed like that was the biggest problem I’d ever had with their mom.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t— but you know that.”

You thought about everything he’d just told you; were glad to have had a few gaps filled in. “Do they both know what happened?” you asked. “Before they were born?”

He’d placed a smoke in his mouth by now. As he dug in his pocket for his lighter, “They know I hurt their mother because she woke me up. I couldn’t really tell you how much they know about why it happened, but I do know that Leia never forgave me for it— even when Padmé did.” 

He finally lit his cigarette, then, and you watched the fresh smoke waft about his head. He seemed like he wanted to sit back down, but he didn’t. He looked at you as he finished, “I wasn’t lying when I said things got better after you— but maybe that was partly because being with you let me sweep a lot of my other crap under the rug, as far as the kids were concerned.”

“So... you used me as a scapegoat?” You asked that without thinking, because the last part of what he said annoyed you.

“No!” He shot you a look as if to say, ‘you should know better’. “The twins just never saw enough to understand, and I didn’t want them to. When things finally started to get better, I didn’t think about the way they saw it— I was just happy not to be such a fucking disaster around them anymore.”

You considered what Anakin had been like when you’d first encountered him. More than just stoic or odd, he’d been palpably unhappy, then: Almost perpetually drunk, mostly alienated from his family, and (you knew because he’d told you) under the impression that nobody could ever possibly want to be near him. From what you knew, it had been that way for a very long time before you’d shown up in his living room, gawking at him and pawing at his leg.

You didn’t have children, but if you did, you realized that you’d probably want them to know as little as possible of what you hated about yourself, even if you happened to hate a lot— and that if something came along to make things better for them unexpectedly, you wouldn’t force them to examine it too closely.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

“Don’t be. I wish I’d said a little bit more, now— they’d trust me more if I had— but I also never thought I’d see you again. I definitely never thought _they’d_ see you again.” His cigarette was more than half-finished by that point; he reached across the desk to stub it out in his little ashtray, but found that he’d left it on the table in the kitchen.

“Fuck,” he said to himself.

“Let’s go upstairs, then,” you suggested. He could put out his cigarette properly, and you could (hopefully) get past some more of the initial awkwardness of being in Luke’s presence again. Anakin was right, after all: He’d have to get used to your being with his dad at some point... and besides that, the fact that you two were comfortable hiding away together didn’t mean you necessarily should anymore.

“...Okay,” he said, before reiterating, “Just don’t worry about what he says to you right now.” He added to that with some reluctance, “I’ll talk to him more about everything later,” which made you feel a bit better.

After sharing a glance with one another, you finally turned to leave the room and make yourselves known.

This time, Anakin led the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that this is all mostly just meandering emotional vomit, and that I just took six chapters and 16k words to cover a single day (?!).
> 
>  _But_ , we all need to try to feel happy right now, and boy does this story make me feel happy. ❤️😷


	12. Better

Luke must have heard his father’s footsteps coming up the stairs, because he called out before either of you came into view, “Dad? I screwed up the garage door.”

Anakin asked in response— also from out of sight— “Is it jammed, or stuck?” You wondered briefly what the difference would have been, but your mind didn’t really have time to linger on that. Very soon you’d reached the top of the staircase, and the short hallway leading to the foyer, where you were fairly certain Luke was standing.

“I’m not sure,” you heard him say. “That’s why I need you to look at it.” Then, you saw him— he saw you, too, and suddenly the garage door didn’t seem to be so much of an issue. “You again,” he said, in a dramatically different tone than the one he’d used with his dad. He said it as though it were an accusation all by itself.

Anakin was in front of you, but he still had his burning cigarette in his hand. He walked into the kitchen to tend to putting it out; however, doing so necessitated that he pass by Luke. As he did, he said clearly and not altogether unthreateningly, _”Be polite.”_

Luke shot him a look, but seemed content to ignore the content of his words. Disdainfully, he glanced over to you and said, “I should have known that was your car on the road.”

“I’m sorry,” you told him, although you had no reason to apologize, really.

Anakin confirmed as he returned from extinguishing his cigarette, “She has nothing to be sorry for; I invited her here.” He stood with his shoulders drawn back in the entrance to the kitchen. It had begun to turn dark outside by now, and he was mostly illuminated by the light behind him. Even to you, in the shadows cast by the unique ambiance, he looked distinctly ominous.

Luke, however, seemed unmoved. 

As he looked at his father, “Don’t you remember what I told you?” 

You just watched as Anakin stepped up closely and answered, “I remember you being wrong.” 

“Are you going to fix the door?” asked Luke after that; again, mostly seeming to ignore what his dad had actually said.

“Are you going to behave?” 

“I’m old enough to—”

The elder of the two interrupted by leaning in and repeating his query, _”Are you going to behave?”_

Luke didn’t answer, but Anakin exited to the garage anyway after the two of them exchanged a hard stare. Before he disappeared from view, he looked back in your direction and said much more gently, “I’ll be right back.” You just nodded.

His footsteps faded; you were left alone with his son. You weren’t quite sure what to do, so you didn’t do anything... but, once Luke was certain his dad was gone, he wasted no time in walking briskly over to you.

“What are you doing with him?” he asked you; again, as though he were making an accusation.

“Spending time with him,” you answered, which was the truth.

“Why?” He appeared both incredulous, and suspicious.

That bothered you— you understood his lack of trust in you, but disdained his complete dismissal of your motive. Anakin had always seemed to be under the impression that people weren’t especially keen on being near him. You knew Luke loved his father (hence his apparent protectiveness); however, it saddened you that not even he could seem to understand that you truly wanted to be with his dad simply for the sake of it.

“He’s nice to be with,” you said. You nearly answered, ‘Because I love him,’ which would have been even more honest... but, you knew that would have been inviting an argument.

“You always thought he was ‘nice to be with’,” said Luke coldly. Then, “I told you he wasn’t in a good place, didn’t I?”

“You did,” you started. “And—”

“So leave him alone,” he interrupted brusquely.

“I don’t think he’d like that,” you countered, as you adjusted your posture; stood up a bit taller yourself. 

You looked at Luke, then; studied his face— you thought you’d have to try very hard not to see the little blonde boy who used to do things like shove handfuls of wet leaves into your bag; however, he was making it very easy for you to see him as he was right now: A slightly more physically-compacted version of his own father, with all the same strength of feeling and will that you’d have expected him to have inherited.

“Anyway,” you continued, “It’s up to your dad and I whether I leave him alone or not, isn’t it?” Carefully— but before Luke could cut in again— you added, “I think he’s doing better than you realize right now,” which was the truth. 

You were, somewhat uncomfortably, reminded of your confrontation with Padmé in her car when she’d discovered your bond with her husband. You knew she had loved him (in retrospect, that much was painfully obvious), but at that point in their relationship, you had a feeling it had been a long time since she had really _seen_ Anakin.

It was easy to lose sight of him, in the face of how he sometimes expressed himself— but, you knew, he was fundamentally a good person. It was why you loved him, why you trusted him, and why you wished other people would trust him, too.

Luke narrowed his own gaze further. “If he’s doing any better now than he was before,” he told you, “It’s because of everything my mom did for him before she died. _You_ of all people shouldn’t get to take advantage of her hard work.” 

You felt anger begin to rise up inside of you. You knew he didn’t understand the situation entirely (and that his lack of understanding wasn’t his own fault), but his presumption upset you— there was arrogance inherent in it, along with a hint of entitlement: Why should Luke get to decide who his father spent time with? Suddenly a note of amusement tempered your anger a bit; you thought it funny how some of the same qualities you were attracted to in Anakin frustrated you in Luke. 

As calmly as you could, “If your dad doesn’t want to be by himself, I don’t think he should have to be.”

“You almost wrecked our family,” Luke told you; he’d started to raise his voice. “When I saw that he’d dragged you home with him again, I tried to tell him he was being stupid— but he wouldn’t listen.” He stepped as closely to you as he could without touching you; he was smaller than Anakin, but frankly no less intimidating this close-up, or this upset.

“You lied every time you came over here for _months_ so you could screw with my dad, and now you’re doing it again.” He looked as though he were trying very hard not to use language you knew his father would have considered impolite; after shaking his head disdainfully, he finished, “I’d rather see him with _anyone_ else other than you.”

Suddenly, from the direction of the entrance to the garage, “There _is_ no one else, Luke.” Anakin spoke loudly and sharply. His voice cut through the air in the room; caused both the smaller, younger version of him currently threatening you with his own wrath, along with you yourself, to turn and look at him. He’d have likely stepped between you, but he didn’t have any room.

“There are _millions_ of other people, Dad. Billions.”

“Not for me,” Anakin answered simply, which was wonderful to hear— but you didn’t take the time to reflect on how happy that made you just then.

Luke took on a slightly more docile tone with his dad than with you as he said, “I don’t understand,” although it was clear he was still angry.

“You don’t have to,” his father told him, in a voice exuding more calm than you’d have expected it to in a situation like this one. You’d never actually seen Luke and Anakin argue before; you weren’t sure when one of them would back down, or how much things tended to escalate between the two of them.

“She almost ruined your life,” said Luke, as he turned from you dismissively to address Anakin alone. He did point at you, though, as he added, “Mom almost kicked you out because of her!”

His son’s words must have struck a nerve. With more than a hint of rising ire, “It was ruined for a long time before she came along— and your mom did _such a good fucking job_ of keeping things normal for you and your sister that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” He finished more quietly as you registered his natural fist begin to clench along with his jaw, “She almost kicked me out because of _me_.”

You’d backed away from them by that point purely out of instinct; maybe you should have left the house entirely— but, Anakin and Luke together happened to be blocking the front door. You didn’t want to say anything, and you weren’t about to come between them physically. So, you watched from a distance; hoped their confrontation would end soon by itself.

“She almost kicked you out because you _fucked the babysitter_ — and now you’re doing it again!”

You caught sight of Anakin’s face, then; the look in his eyes made your stomach drop. So quietly and imposingly that it further unnerved you, “Stop— you _really_ don’t know what you’re talking about.” They were still standing closely; face-to-face. Neither of them moved.

“I understand that you’re getting tricked by a little—”

The elder of the two raised his left hand with such great suddenness that you were afraid for a moment he was going to hit Luke with it. Instead, though, he used it to grasp him by the front of his shirt. He pulled; twisted it in his fist— you could have sworn you saw the younger one’s feet actually leave the ground as Anakin wrenched him roughly and started to say something.

Before he could, though, Luke’s own hand came up— balled into a fist, and travelling very quickly as he swiftly punched his dad in the face.

Anakin seemed shocked; he let go hastily, and dropped his son with a hard thump.

“What the fuck!”

You could hardly tell which of them had said it; anyway, you were frozen in place. You watched them stare at one another for a few long moments: Luke on the floor; Anakin standing above him, arm still extended as it had been when it had shot out in the first place. Eventually, he lowered it very slowly; as he did, Luke began to get up.

They were still quiet once he was on his feet, and so were you.

Finally, Anakin noticed that his nose happened to be bleeding; moved to touch his face. Luke started to apologize, but his dad interrupted him. “It’s fine— do you have work tonight?”

“Yeah,” said Luke.

“Then go get ready for work.”

“Dad, I think—”

“Not now, Luke.”

“I didn’t mean—”

 _”Go._ We’ll talk about it later.” Anakin seemed desperate for their interaction to end, at least for now. He spoke evenly, and the expression on his face was neutral; however, you had a feeling that he was exerting an enormous amount of effort to keep it that way. Silently, you pleaded that Luke would understand... and thankfully, he seemed to.

“Okay,” he said, although you had a feeling it really wasn’t okay; at least, that it wasn’t yet. He turned anyhow; left for upstairs, presumably to get his things together to go to work. He didn’t look back down at either of you as he ascended; while he did, Anakin took another cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. His nose wasn’t bleeding all that much, but it had left an angry-looking smear above his lip and a stain on the sleeve of his shirt, from where he’d wiped his face.

Luke didn’t say anything about the smoke, and once he was out of sight, Anakin turned for the kitchen. Whether you ought to have or not, you followed.

“If you want to go home now,” he said flatly as he reached the sink, “I’ll understand.” He turned on the water with his own hand; he was using the other to hold his cigarette. He let it run cold; got a dishcloth wet. He looked at the drain rather than at you as he dabbed at his nose with it.

You ignored his offer; asked him, “Are you okay?”

To your relief, he smiled. “I’m fine,” he said with a faint laugh. Then, more to himself than you, “...That kid’s stronger than he looks, though.”

“Is there anything I can—?”

“No,” as he shook his head. He did look at you when he said that; you could see the area around his right eye beginning to turn dark.

“You should probably put ice on that,” you suggested.

He set down his dishcloth; touched his fresh bruise gingerly. “Maybe,” he conceded. Then, “...If you want to, you can grab me an ice-pack from the freezer. Alright?”

“Alright.” You went to the freezer; found what he’d asked for. As you did, he set down his newly-bloodied dishcloth and sat down at the table. It was quiet enough in the kitchen that you could hear Luke moving about upstairs. You gave Anakin the ice-pack; sat down opposite him.

He winced as he placed it under his eye; held it there. He didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry,” you told him.

“That had nothing to do with you,” he said through his smoke. 

“It sure seemed like it did.”

He sighed. “I told you downstairs— those kids don’t trust me. They don’t have any reason to, especially with their mom gone.” Once again, he seemed embarrassed; finished anyway, “It’s my fault. I could have fixed it a long time ago, and I didn’t.”

“You still can,” you pointed out. 

This time it was Anakin who ignored you. “I thought Luke would understand this better,” he said. “He’s more like me.”

“He hasn’t had a chance to understand,” you reminded him. You added, “It’s not too late to give him one.”

“I don’t know if it’s going to be easier or harder now,” Anakin mused. He looked you in the eye, then, through his ice. “He knows I love him, but I’m not going to let him shit all over what I have with you.”

That made you smile. You looked over his face; let your gaze linger on the blood crusting around his nose, and the swollen darkness surrounding his eye. You couldn’t help but feel responsible for it; you were certain that neither of them would have become so worked-up with the other if you hadn’t been present. 

“Thank you,” was all you said just then, because you wanted Anakin to know that his willingness to defend your connection with him meant a lot to you, even if it hadn’t turned out especially well tonight.

“He has no idea how much you helped me,” he sighed as he finally stubbed out the end of his most recent cigarette. “Then, or now.”

“If you care what he thinks about us, then I think you need to let him know— at least partially,” you told him.

“It’s not that I care what he thinks about us, necessarily,” said Anakin. He took a deep breath; continued to hold your gaze. “You really did mean what you said— right?”

“I’m not sure what part you’re talking about, exactly,” you ventured, because you’d both said quite a lot over the past day or two. “ _But_ , I can definitely tell you that whatever it was, yes— I meant it.”

He smiled. “I’m talking about when you said I was stuck, too.”

“I might have meant that most of all,” you answered.

“If you’re going to hang around until I die, then,” he said, “It means my kids can’t think you’re wrecking my life— that you _ever_ wrecked my life.” 

You looked over his face once more; still felt as though that black eye was more your fault than anyone’s. “Are you sure I’m not?” you asked him with a little laugh.

You expected him to chuckle in return, or at least grin, but he didn’t— instead, he took you by surprise; rose from the table. Wordlessly, he walked around it; stepped up behind your chair. You tilted your head back; looked up at him. 

He stared back at you without speaking for long enough that you felt the need to ask, “What is it?” You weren’t sure what he was doing; what he might have wanted.

“You don’t understand yet either, do you?”

“I must not,” you said, confused.

He bent down, then; placed both of his arms around you from behind your shoulders. Out of what might have been pure instinct, you reached up and clasped one of his hands in your own; it happened to be the bionic one of the two. He noticed; made it squeeze you back.

Because he was close enough to your ear, now, he whispered into it, “You saved me— _twice_. Do you have any idea how angry it makes me to know that anyone thinks the opposite?”

Before you could stop yourself, you found yourself asking, “Did their mom know?” You knew what the kids thought of you; what had Padmé thought? It didn’t actually matter, now; not to you, anyway... but, you couldn’t help but be curious.

Anakin seemed to get it. “She knew,” he said. After a brief pause, “...Not right away— but, she did understand, eventually.” With a hint of sadness, “She always understood.”

“I’m sorry,” you told him, because you knew he missed her.

“Don’t be,” he said, in his familiar way. Then, he tightened his hold on you. “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” he continued carefully, “But... you’re not much like her— not at all.”

You weren’t quite sure how you _should_ take that, but before you could say anything to it, he finished, “One thing you do have in common with her, though, is that you always seem to end up understanding, too.”

You thought he might say something else after that— or kiss you, or stand back up straight to light a cigarette and make coffee. 

He didn’t do any of those things right away, though; he just held you quietly. He’d stay that way until you heard adequate shuffling from upstairs to indicate that Luke’s departure for work was imminent. At that point, Anakin finally let go of you; made coffee and lit a smoke as you had predicted he would. 

Luke didn’t say anything on his way out the front door; neither you nor Anakin said anything to him, either. 

You trusted, though, that they’d work it out soon. 

Anakin was right— they really did have to, because you fully intended on sticking around until the very end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was fun.


	13. Someday

“Ani?”

He was facing away from you, and you couldn’t rightly tell whether or not he was awake. You’d fallen asleep curled up behind him, but had apparently shifted in the night— he was about a foot away from you, now; still beneath the sheets, but moving about. He seemed, quietly, to be mumbling something you couldn’t understand.

_”Anakin?”_

It had been weeks, now, since his confrontation with Luke, and you and Anakin had made a pleasant habit of staying over at one another’s homes. Tonight you were at his, because you’d goaded him into promising you another look at him as he swung his shinai around the garage. He’d acted reluctant to tell you he’d do it, but once he had started, he seemed perfectly content to continue for quite a while.

Once again, you had become mesmerized; you loved to watch him move, and hear him shout, too. You especially enjoyed kissing the sweat from his neck when he was finished, so you had done that as well. You’d been sitting, as before, on the old freezer in his garage, with your limbs wrapped around him. 

You put your arm around him right now, too, as you slid closer to him in bed. You said his name one more time; squeezed him. Finally, you felt his muscles tense up, followed by a slow release; then, you became certain that his eyes had fluttered open. You felt safe waking him, because you’d been here when he’d fallen asleep— Anakin knew exactly where you were.

He suppressed a cough; you let go. He said your name as he sat up in bed, and so you sat up alongside him as you placed your hand on his back. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Just a dream,” he told you.

“A bad one?”

“...I think so.” Typically, Anakin did not share the contents of his dreams with you. He had seemed embarrassed the one and only time he’d done so, and he hadn’t done it again since. You were fine with that— but still concerned.

“Are you okay?”

“...I think so,” he said again.

You snaked your arm around his waist from the side. It took him a minute to do so, but eventually, he returned your embrace. As you leaned into him, you raised your other hand and let it rest atop his chest; felt him breathe.

You sat together and held each other like this for a while; finally, you could register him beginning to relax. 

“It’s still the middle of the night,” you told him, because you weren’t sure if he knew.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

You hadn’t intended for it to sound as though you were upset about his having woken you. You answered his apology with, “You don’t need to be sorry.”

“Thanks.” Then, after a pause, “...I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad I’m here, too.” 

He sighed, and kissed your head. Then, he moved to lie back down, and you followed him. As you curled back up behind him, he said quietly, “It’s nice waking up with you.”

That made you smile; bury your nose in his hair. “Even after a bad dream?” you asked.

“Especially after a bad dream.”

“I like waking up with you, too,” you told him, as you wrapped your arm around him; pressed your hand into his chest.

He was silent for a while after that. So long, in fact, that you closed your eyes because you were sure he’d fallen back asleep. Suddenly, though, “...Do you mean that?” Anakin was still frequently concerned with whether or not you meant things.

“Of course I do,” you said. You added, “I miss you when we’re apart, you know.”

“How much?”

“...What?”

“How much do you miss me?”

You thought that was an odd question. “What do you mean?”

“I miss you, too,” he ventured, without answering you. You got the feeling that this was easier for him right now because he wasn’t facing you, which you certainly understood. You waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“It’s a lot,” you told him finally. “I miss you lots, when one of us has to leave.” That wasn’t a lie.

You couldn’t read his expression through his voice. “What if you didn’t have to?” he asked you. He might have sounded cautious.

“...Didn’t have to miss you, or didn’t have to leave?” you asked, although were quite certain that you already knew very well what he meant. You both had and hadn’t expected this so soon— of course, all things considered, you supposed Anakin had actually shown great restraint in waiting several weeks. It would have been a lie to say that you hadn’t thought about it, too... but, you also hadn’t been about to bring it up. Objectively, you knew that the two of you were already moving at light-speed. 

You did, however, have some lost time to make up for... didn’t you?

“I mean,” he said, “That maybe you could just stay here.”

“Stay here?” 

“You wouldn’t have to leave anymore,” he reasoned. “And then we wouldn’t have to miss each other.”

“I’ve always hated missing you,” you admitted, as you breathed him in. Smoke, sweat, soap, and the faintest hint of cologne had once again become— combined— your absolute favourite of scents since reconnecting with Anakin. You thought back, juxtapositionally, to the time immediately after he’d choked you, all those years ago. He’d been entirely unconscious; hadn’t meant to do it, but you had been absolutely terrified of him, then.

It hadn’t, however, been enough to keep you away. Nothing ever had, except for when he’d told you to go... and even that might not have been enough to make you leave him be, at this point. That was why you felt fortunate to have already received Anakin’s guarantee— his promise. You trusted him implicitly.

“So stop missing me,” he said. It sounded, somehow, like both an offer and a dare at the same time.

You paused. You thought about your apartment; you liked your apartment. You liked your couch and your bed, and your table in your little kitchen where you enjoyed waking up in peaceful silence. After that, though, you thought about Anakin, and _his_ couch— you’d fallen in love on it, among other things. Similarly, you’d never been unhappy in his bed; not since he’d been brave enough to share it with you.

You realized, too, that you very much liked sitting in his kitchen with him in the mornings.

“Are you sure?” you asked. You knew that he was... and so were you, really. But, you thought you should confirm anyway.

“I never liked being away from you before,” he said. “And I don’t like being away from you now.”

“What about Luke?” you asked. You’d not seen much of Luke over the past few weeks, really. Partly you knew it was a consequence of him working nights, but you also couldn’t help but wonder if he weren’t simply avoiding you. He’d been cordial when he’d had cause to interact with you recently; _almost_ kind, at times. You knew they’d talked, but you were still curious as to how extensively Anakin had spoken with his son about what had transpired when he was little.

“He’s moving out soon,” revealed Anakin. “He’s been saving money since he got out of school.”

“Oh,” was all you said right away. Had he been planning to talk to you about this, then?

“I’m sorry,” he started, and you realized you’d said the wrong thing.

“No,” you interrupted, because you wanted to correct yourself. “I didn’t mean ‘oh’ as in _’oh’_ , I meant—”

He cut you off, then, with, “ _No,_ it’s okay— I shouldn’t have—”

 _”Yes,”_ you insisted. You always spared Anakin from awkwardness when you could; he never hesitated to do the same for you, after all, when the need arose. 

“What?”

“If you’re asking me a question, then the answer is yes.” 

“It is?”

“It is.”

You could hear him smile through his words, now; it made you smile, too. “...Okay,” he said. Then, “Thank you,” although he certainly didn’t owe you any gratitude. You knew you’d work out the details together later.

For now, it seemed almost a relief to have gotten this discussion out of the way— you had sensed it coming; he likely had too, but social convention should have dictated that you not address this particular subject for a long time to come. You were glad, right now, that Anakin didn’t seem keen on paying social convention much more mind than he typically paid to how other people interpreted his behaviour.

You were both quiet, then; you’d be quiet until you both fell asleep again. Before you did, though, you pressed your front as closely into his back as you possibly could; breathed in that intoxicating scent of his through his hair. You really were here with him, laying in his bed, you assured yourself— this wasn’t an illusion, or some cruelly delightful dream.

Just weeks ago you never would have thought that you’d have Anakin for yourself again in any capacity... but tonight, you fell back into unconsciousness imagining what it was going to be like to wake with him every morning, and fall asleep with him every night. Normally you wouldn’t have allowed yourself to fantasize like that, but tonight— finally— it didn’t feel as though you were taking quite so much of a risk by doing so.

Right now you simply felt happy, because all you’d ever really wanted from Anakin had been more of his time.

...

“I was wrong,” Luke seemed to tell you out of nowhere. “I’m sorry.”

You had been sitting in the kitchen looking at a newspaper. Anakin didn’t read them because they made him angry; he said he didn’t need to feel angry any more often than he already did— but, they arrived at the house three times each week anyhow, because Padmé’s subscription was good for another year. Anakin said he didn’t want to waste money cancelling it. You thought there might be a bit more to it than that, but if receiving her newspaper brought him comfort, then you weren’t going to bother him about it. It was a little thing; anyway, you’d taken to reading them whenever he got into a mood that necessitated he go downstairs to be aggressive with his punching bag.

You didn’t mind that mood— or any of his moods, really— but you didn’t get much out of watching him let off steam in that particular way. That was how you found yourself alone in the kitchen when Luke wandered in, fresh from a night at work. 

His apology confused you; again, you’d barely spoken with him since he’d punched his dad. You looked up at him and asked, “What?”

“You actually do care about him, don’t you?”

Oh. “I always have,” you assured Luke. You’d cared about Anakin almost from the moment you’d met him, truth be told— he had made it impossible not to.

“...I know,” he said, He hadn’t seemed to know before; you wondered what Anakin had said to change his mind.

“What did he tell you?”

“A few things.” Luke looked down a moment, and then back up at you— a lot like his dad tended to do sometimes. When your eyes met again, he held your gaze firmly in his own as he told you, “But he’s better at _doing_ things than _saying_ things, isn’t he?”

“He is,” you agreed. Anakin had always been more comfortable showing than telling. What was Luke getting at, though?

“He asked me to practice with him the other day,” he said.

“Hm?” 

“Kendo. I can’t remember the last time he picked up his own sword.” 

“That’s fantastic,” you said, and it was— you loved the effect the sport seemed to have on Anakin, although you weren’t entirely sure what that had to do with you.

“Yeah,” Luke told you simply. “It is.”

“So...?” 

“So,” he said, “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything.” You hadn’t, really— or, you didn’t think you had.

He shook his head. “He said it was for you.”

“...I don’t understand.”

“He said you wanted to watch him,” Luke explained, “And that he was worried about looking slow in front of you.”

You were a bit taken aback by that. You knew he had them, but Anakin was not typically open about his own insecurities. Besides that— although Luke had been more cordial with you since you’d witnessed him punch his father— he certainly hadn’t been this forthcoming as of yet. It caught you off-guard.

“...Is that what he said?” you asked.

“That’s what he said.”

You smiled. “I don’t think you should tell him you told me.”

Luke smiled back. You hadn’t seen him smile since he was small, and witnessing it right now felt like a relief. It seemed to make him look a bit more like the kid you remembered playing Guitar Hero with ten years before. You hadn’t had a lot of time to contemplate it amongst the pain of having to give up your relationship with their father, but you’d missed Luke and Leia as well, back then. You’d spent a lot of time with them, after all; you really didn’t want them to hate you now that they were grown.

“I won’t,” he assured you. “I just wanted you to know that I think I understand, now.”

“Thank you too, then,” you said. Cautiously, you added, “I’m sorry, you know— for everything that happened.” You didn’t suppose that would mean much to Luke coming from you now, but you thought it was worth saying anyway. As with a few other things, you never thought you’d have the opportunity.

“It’s okay,” he said. “They worked it out.” You knew he meant his parents. His smile faded; he shifted uncomfortably— again, a bit like his dad. “I just never expected—“

“—I didn’t either,” you interrupted, because although you knew what he was going to say, part of you was afraid of how he’d word it.

“I thought you were taking advantage of him,” he said, which wasn’t quite as crude as what you thought he might say. 

You looked at his face again. It was clear to you how much he loved his dad. You couldn’t be upset with him. “I can see how it might have seemed like that,” you told Luke. “But I didn’t go looking for him, you know.”

“I know.” He paused, then laughed. “Leia and I fought about that for years.”

“What?”

“The first time. After everything came out.”

“Oh,” you said. Then, “Your dad told me you two saw it differently.”

“We did. I hated you— and she hated our dad.”

You were the one who looked down, this time. As you studied a series of tiny pictures indicating the three-day weather forecast, “I never wanted either of you to hate anyone.” They’d been sweet kids, both of them— you had liked being around them back then. You never intended to affect them the way it was beginning to seem you had.

Luke shrugged as you looked back up at him. “People hate things,” he said. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

“What about Leia?” you asked. 

“That’s a bit different,” he said flatly.

“I’m sorry,” you told him again. 

“It’s not just you,” said Luke. “They’ve always been weird with each other.” 

That was nice of him to say. Anakin had told you essentially the same thing, but you were beginning to believe that your affair with him had affected Leia’s opinion of her dad more than you’d been told. You still hadn’t actually seen her, since coming back into his life— and she didn’t often call. Even if you weren’t the biggest hindrance to their connection, you thought, you couldn’t possibly be helping it along.

“Thanks,” you said, because you did appreciate what he’d just told you. 

“Sure.” He looked out the window; squinted at the light. “I’m going upstairs. Tell him I made it home, okay?”

“Okay,” you said. Luke started to walk away, then. You stopped him with his name, and he looked over his shoulder at you.

“Hm?”

You hesitated. “... _Is_ he slow? With his sword?” Anakin hadn’t seemed out-of-practice to you; however, he consistently evaluated his own performance as being terrible. You didn’t know the first thing about it, really, and you were curious about what Luke thought, since he was good at it himself.

He laughed, and laughed loudly.

“No!” he exclaimed. As he looked ahead of himself again and continued in the direction of the stairs, he added with the slightest hint of embarrassment, “I still can’t beat him— not even with two hands.”

You grinned, which you were glad Luke couldn’t see. You were hardly surprised.

“Maybe someday,” you called out as he climbed the steps.

He didn’t look back down at you, but he did laugh again before echoing as he disappeared from view, “Maybe someday.”

You looked back down at the newspaper, then, and continued to skim the headlines while you waited for Anakin to be finished hitting things.

Maybe he’d feel like a shower when he was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really appreciate anyone who’s reading this.


	14. Always *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You _can_ probably skip the first two-thirds of this one, if you want to. They’re mostly just for me; I’m sorry.

“Come here.”

You looked up. Luke had long since gone upstairs; you’d been about to get up to finish off the last of the morning’s coffee before it burned to the bottom of the pot. Anakin had appeared suddenly from the basement before you could do so; he spoke very assertively.

“What’s wrong?” you asked him. You got up from your spot at the table, but not for coffee. You knew Anakin had gone downstairs to blow off some steam— had he hurt himself in the process?

“I need you,” he said as he walked into the kitchen to meet you. 

“Are you okay?” 

You faced him; he stepped up closely. You looked him up-and-down as he did; the expression on his face was very serious... but, there didn’t seem to be anything the matter with him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt at all, and he’d rendered himself soaked with sweat doing whatever he’d been doing in the basement. You took a moment to marvel at the way he looked with the light from the window reflecting off of the slick sheen of his effort— it had even begun to drip suggestively down the tight, black sheath he used to keep the lower portion of his right arm attached to the rest of him. That was especially beautiful, in a way you’d never have been able to conceive of before knowing Anakin.

“I’m fine,” he said, and he took your face in his hands. You absolutely loved the way his hands felt, when he touched you with both of them at the same time. It was a sensation unlike any other: Half of his grasp was warm and solid and you could feel his pulse through it; the other half was smooth and cool, and when he touched your face, you could smell the leather off of the glove he used to conceal his thin, bionic fingers.

“You are?” you asked, although your breath caught in your throat when you spoke. He used those perfect, contrasting hands to tilt your head upward himself, so that you could look at his face. Then, he ran his artificial thumb along your cheek. You let yourself study him, because you loved to gaze at his face: His old scars, and those more recent lines, too. His hair was starting to get too long again, but the sight of its amber tangles dampened and stuck to his skin was utterly captivating. You’d never seen anything or anyone more elegant than Anakin Skywalker— he’d never, ever stopped taking your breath away.

“I just need you,” he reiterated, and he stared into your eyes intently. You’d have thought him angry, but you knew him better than that— he wasn’t angry.

“Luke is upstairs,” you murmured, and you raised your own hands to place them on his chest. You pressed the fingers of one of them into his flesh; he was warm, as always, and utterly overwrought in a way that made you never want to stop touching him. The other you let trail down the front of his torso; trace lines over those perfect muscles of his until your fingers reached the waistband of his shorts, which you just couldn’t help but toy with.

You could feel his breathing begin to quicken as he said quietly— and without breaking his stare— “Let’s go downstairs, then.”

You smiled widely because that made you feel excited; then you asked him cheekily, “Why, Ani?” simply because you wanted to hear his answer. 

Without skipping a beat— or losing his somehow-intriguing air of complete seriousness— he slid his natural hand around to the back of your head. He leaned down very closely to inform you for a third and final time, _”Because I need you.”_

“Okay,” you agreed, and you grasped his hand to let him lead you down to the basement, as you had always liked to do.

...

“I’m sorry,” he told you breathlessly from behind. “I should have asked first.”

You were bent over his bed; the old one— the one you always used to use together. After getting you downstairs, Anakin had stripped you of what you’d been wearing, somehow, as quickly and adeptly as he had subsequently rid himself of his own shorts. He’d begun to kiss you after that; grasp at every part of you, and you’d done just the same to him. 

Eventually, you’d grasped him somewhere which had made him turn you around so that you were facing away from him. He’d already coaxed you to the edge of the bed by that point, and so it seemed natural that you would bend yourself over it for him. You savoured, once you had, the sensation of his enveloping you from behind as he began to take what he’d apparently needed from you so desperately.

That’s what had led him to apologize to you, but you truly wished he wouldn’t.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” you gasped, “Just _please_ don’t stop.”

“I won’t,” he managed haltingly as he kept on enjoying you. Then, as he’d said the other week in reference to his ability to let you go, _”I cant.”_

He placed his prosthetic hand on your waist, and you could feel its fingers clench you gently as its thumb stroked your skin. His own, flesh-and-blood hand was buried in the hair at the back of your head. The way his fingers moved made it seem as though he were just barely restraining himself from taking a fistful of it and tugging. You wouldn’t necessarily have minded if he had, but you appreciated that even in his frenzy of desire, he clearly did not want to risk hurting you.

He increased his speed; you clawed at the sheets and tensed the muscles in your legs as his rutting intensified. You had always loved that Anakin was so strong; it might, in fact, have been the very first thing about him that you’d ever noticed. You would never forget how it felt to examine him through his shirt while he was distracted by his rum; then, finally, how it felt to undress him for real once you had each realized that your inclination toward once another was quickly turning physical.

You hadn’t had sex with Anakin in his basement for a decade; to do so again— and to do so like _this_ ; desperately, wantonly, and pinned from behind by his sheer strength— took you to a place in your mind you’d not visited consciously for a very long time.

It was a place you’d forgotten you loved so much.

“It’s okay,” you assured him, as you felt his hand come close to clenching again. Normally he’d have asked if you were certain, or for some other form of extra confirmation; however, right now, he took you at your word: He gathered your hair up in his hand at your expression of permission. Simultaneously, he pushed your head down into the plush of the mattress; allowed more of his own strength to propel him as he continued his effort behind you.

As best you could, you shifted backward so that you could make it as easy for him as possible to take full advantage of your current position. He seemed to appreciate that very much: He let go of your hair, then, and slid his hand down your back until it rested beside his other one on your waist. Again, their contrast was elegant: The thin rigidity of the fingers on his right combined with the temperate power of those on his left to impress you as nothing else ever had.

His grasping you made you shout out his name; you loved to call his name while he pleased you like this. He said yours back, and tightened his grip on your waist. You contracted around him forcefully; to him it must have seemed quite sudden, because you could have sworn that his legs came close to buckling before you felt him finally come completely undone.

You yelled; he squeezed you, and after becoming lost together for a few moments in the aftermath of your surprise connection, he backed up enough for you to turn over. You’d been craving another look at him, and the sight which met your eyes as you flipped your body around did not disappoint you: Although he was absolutely dripping in sweat, now, the cool air in the basement had prompted goosebumps to form on Anakin’s skin. You could see every perfect, utterly defined part of his body as his chest swelled and diminished with each one of his heaving breaths.

He stared back at you as you reclined horizontally on his little downstairs bed; your legs hung limply off of the side, and you knew that you likely looked as contentedly spent as he did. Eventually, he seemed to compose himself enough that he felt he could safely lower himself onto you; he did so, and when his face was close enough, you craned upward to kiss him.

He kissed you back; however, when he was finished, he grinned lopsidedly and told you once again, “I’m sorry.”

That made you laugh; you couldn’t help yourself. “Sorry for what?” you asked.

He chuckled, too. “I really should have asked.”

“You kind of did,” you smiled.

“I just needed you,” he said as if to explain, although he’d already made that much very clear. Then, he nestled his face into your neck; kissed you there.

“Sometimes we need things,” you reminded him reassuringly, as you squirmed happily beneath him.

“Is there anything _you_ need right now?” he asked, which you thought was very kind.

“Just to hold you like this for a bit,” you said, as you placed your arms around his back. Then, “What about you? Do you need anything else?”

He raised his head so that you could see his face; smiled handsomely. “A cigarette,” he said, “But only once you’re finished holding me.” He appeared to take a moment to think, after that. “...Then, a shower— _if_ you’ll join me.”

“Always,” you told him, and you took all the time you wanted letting him rest in your arms. 

Much as there was nobody else in the world who seemed to impress or attract you quite the way Anakin could, you were quickly finding that nothing and no one else had ever been able to surprise or delight you quite like him, either.

...

Watching Anakin smoke cigarettes naked had always been a guilty pleasure of yours, and you took a great amount of (slightly shameful) joy in it now. You were finally sitting up atop the bed on which he’d expressed his sudden need for you. You had become cold without his warmth, and so you’d maneuvered your legs underneath the blanket he still kept spread across the mattress. With that, you were happy just to sit and look at him.

Of course, as you looked at him you couldn’t help but to think about him, and thinking about him made you think about the two of you. You caught his attention by saying his name; then, “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he said, which was wonderful to hear. Even when you’d last attached to one another like this, he’d never been what you’d have described as ‘open’. He still wasn’t; not always, but he certainly approached a state of being so more often than he had before. You liked it.

“When do you want me to stop missing you?” you asked. 

He knew just what you meant; smiled as he turned away from the window under which he liked to smoke and toward you, “Whenever you want.”

You started carefully, “I thought you might want me to wait for Luke...”

“...Oh,” he said. “You might be right.” 

Luke had obviously softened his opinion of your relationship with his father, but you didn’t want to push it. Besides that, you knew the excitement you were bound to share with Anakin at your ability to truly be together as often as you wanted would likely lead to more frequent intimacy, at least at first: You neither wished to attempt to restrain it, nor accidentally express it in view of anyone except for him.

“It’s okay,” you assured him. “I’m not going anywhere, remember?”

He laughed; blew out some smoke above his head. “I remember.” After putting his cigarette out in the ashtray he’d brought down with him earlier, he sat beside you on the bed. “I think part of me is afraid that if I give you too much time to change your mind, you’ll... well, you’ll change your mind.”

You laughed, too, because it sounded absurd to you. Then, you remembered that it clearly wasn’t absurd to him; tempered your response.

As you shifted to lean against him, “I’m not going to change my mind.” You slid an arm around his waist, then, because you liked to hold him that way. After ducking under the remnant of his arm so that he could place it around your shoulders in return (he’d taken off his prosthesis when he’d risen from you initially) you added, “It didn’t change for ten years.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, which hadn’t necessarily been the response you’d hoped to prompt.

“Stop being sorry. It’s not as if I sat around in suspended animation waiting for you.”

“Sometimes I still worry that you did,” he admitted.

You shook your head. “No. If I had, I’d probably be angry, don’t you think?” You thought a moment, about the ways he’d changed; about what Luke had told you. You also thought about the photographic evidence you’d seen upstairs of his having fixed his relationship with his wife before she died. “Anyway,” you pointed out, “ _you_ didn’t live that way— I can tell you didn’t.” 

As you tightened your hold on him, he conceded, “You’re right.” He still sounded as if he felt guilty; as though he’d gotten a better deal out of things than you had.

You knew he hated to hear it, but it made sense for you to say after that, “It’s good, Ani— I’m proud of you for it.” He sighed; before he could interrupt you, you continued, “I’m glad things got better for you— that you _made_ them better. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have you right now... would I?”

“No,” he said decidedly. “You wouldn’t.” 

You hadn’t realized, when you’d first fallen for him, quite how far he’d strayed from any semblance of true functionality. You’d begun to really see it not long after having to leave him; it had made you wonder over the years what had actually happened to him following your parting. You had always hoped that he’d gotten better; however, sometimes you’d typed his name into the search bar on your phone specifically to check and see if he had died.

Of course, he never had.

A feeling came over you; you felt it was your turn to say, “I’m sorry.”

He released you from his embrace so that he could sit up taller, and gave you a look. “What the fuck for?” he asked. It came out more gently than his language might have suggested.

“For not helping you,” you told him.

“You did,” he said incredulously, as if he didn’t understand what you meant.

You had to restrain your own laughter at that particular insistence; once you’d composed yourself, “I sat around and got drunk with you when sitting around and getting drunk was the last thing you should have been doing.” It was both relieving and painful to say that out loud to Anakin himself.

He sighed again. “With or without you, that’s all I would have done anyway.” He looked down at you until he was sure he was really holding your gaze; reminded you, “ _Without_ you, it never would have changed at all. Anyway,” he said, “I already told you how much it meant to me that you wanted to be close to me back then.”

“I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be close to you,” you said truthfully.

He smiled, but he looked away from you at that. The expression on his face told you he’d had enough of this particular discussion for now, and that was alright with you. If Anakin had a low tolerance for emotional pain, then it was certainly something he more than made up for in myriad ways. You realized that was likely as deliberate as his drinking had been; again, he was a kind enough person that he was highly motivated to spare those he loved the worst of himself.

Hence his addiction, and his basement, and the thick walls he’d once set up around his heart.

You couldn’t be happier to be on the verge of living completely inside of those walls— you knew you’d be safe there; you knew where all the cracks and faults were, after all.

“I love you,” you told him, and then you cast the blanket from off of your legs and stood up. 

As he followed you in rising from the bed, “I can tell.” Then, he wrapped you up in his arm; kissed you. You couldn’t get enough of his kissing you. “I love you, too,” he said when he was finished, and he looked in the direction of the stairs. “...You said Luke is home?”

“He’s probably asleep by now.”

Anakin thought a moment. “There’s a shower in the bathroom downstairs,” he said. It sounded like a suggestion. “It’s small, but...” He trailed off; shrugged.

You repressed another laugh, because it was almost as if he’d read your mind. Anakin was good at that. “Sounds perfect,” you smiled. This house was almost identical in its architecture to the one you grew up in— they were part of the same neighbourhood. However, exploring it with him somehow had not yet stopped being fun or interesting for you— a bit like exploring Anakin himself.

You dressed (albeit half-heartedly) because you still weren’t alone in the house, and then you tried not to be too loud as you went on up the stairs together to investigate the shower on the main floor.

You were quickly finding that you couldn’t wait to have the sort of time with Anakin that you’d only have been able to imagine just days before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t actually express how surprised/happy I am to have anyone else at all here with me. Thank you.


	15. Scared

“Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

You peered up from your phone at the sound of Anakin’s voice. You’d been curled up looking at e-mail as you sat at the end of the couch in his living room, after returning from work. It was a bit late, and you had supposed when you walked in that he’d been down in his basement. You hadn’t heard him in spite of seeing his car; figured he might have been working on something. You knew you’d have him all evening, and so you hadn’t bothered him just yet.

You were here almost all of the time, now; the lease on your apartment was close to expiring, and Luke had— after a few weeks of looking around— found a place of his own. He was moving his things out incrementally (you were moving yours in similarly); however, he rarely stayed the night anymore. 

For the most part, it was just you and Anakin in the house.

“No,” you answered, as you looked up. You hadn’t heard him come up the stairs at all; blinked the light from your phone’s screen out of your eyes as you sat up to greet him.

There really wasn’t a chance to greet him, however— he appeared distinctly unsettled as he asked before you could say anything further, _”Are you sure?”_

You gave him a look. He had always been a bit irritable, of course; you’d noticed that a very long time ago— but, he had rarely ever directed his expressions of annoyance toward you. Anyway, it looked right now as though he were more than merely perturbed. 

“I’m sure,” you said, and you certainly hoped you sounded so.

He took a deep breath, then demanded, “I need you to tell me the truth.” He spoke as gently as it seemed he could right now, but he was still very insistent. You figured that meant you must not have sounded certain enough; however, you truly didn’t know what he was talking about. His expression had softened, but he continued to look uneasy.

After hesitating briefly, he walked up to where you were sitting and joined you; perched on the edge of the couch. He looked at you expectantly, but you weren’t sure what to say that you hadn’t already said.

“I don’t know what you’re—”

 _”Please!”_ Suddenly, he once more seemed on the verge of being quite irate. You almost backed away from him, but thought better of it: You weren’t frightened, just startled and confused. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because he’d already leaned into you very closely— seemingly to examine the expression on your face.

You were beginning to feel annoyed as well; his moods were catching. Anyhow, you didn’t want him to be angry with you for something you hadn’t done— or hadn’t known _not_ to do.

“Anakin,” you started, in a way you hoped would capture and hold his attention. “I need to know what you think I did before I can tell you whether or not I did it.”

“It’s not what _you_ did,” he told you, after a pause. He was back to speaking more gently, now; appeared to have composed himself, at least a bit. Much more reassuringly, “It’s okay— _I just need you to tell me the truth.”_ He then seemed to debate with himself over whether to finally add, “...I’ve done this before, you know,” coupled with one more tentative reassurance that all was well.

Although he looked to be calming down, you were still baffled— and still slightly irritated. You squinted at him, as if doing so would help you figure him out; however, it didn’t. 

“Done _what_ before?”

With a sound indicating renewed frustration, “You know what I’m talking about!”

_”No I don’t!”_

It seemed to finally begin to dawn on him that you truly had no clue. He drew back from you; sat up straight again. “...You really don’t know?”

You shook your head.

He tilted his; asked, “So you’re not...?”

It was at this point that it did occur to you what he actually meant. How could you not have understood? 

“No! No— _no_.” 

“You’re _sure_?”

“Completely.” 

You’d been using the same birth control for a number of years, and it hadn’t ever let you down— you were quite secure in the knowledge that you were not pregnant. Why would Anakin have thought you were?

He busied himself studying your face once more; seemed satisfied, now, that you were telling him the truth.

“...I’m sorry,” he said to you.

“What made you think...?”

“There was a box— from a test. It was in the downstairs bathroom; I thought—”

“It wasn’t mine,” you told him decidedly. After a moment of thought, “Is Luke seeing anyone who could...?”

He shook his head. “No.” His answer had an air of complete certainty to it which kept you from questioning him— he did seem to know his son fairly well. However, if it didn’t belong to you or anyone associated with Luke...

“...Leia?” Her name passed your lips as if it were a question, and you actually hadn’t entirely meant to say it out loud. Anakin looked away from you; narrowed his eyes out the front window. 

“She was here,” he said. “The other day, while we were both at work— she was driving some of Luke’s things to his new place for him.” He paused. “I don’t like her boyfriend.”

“Why not?” you asked. You supposed— with a hint of guilt— that Leia had perceived privacy here; that, or she had reached out to her brother for support.

“She can never find him when she needs him— it happens often enough that it pisses me off. I barely know him, but I know I don’t trust him.”

“Well,” you pointed out, “you also don’t actually know what the test said yet— or what Leia is thinking or feeling about it.”

“You’re right,” he said. “And that’s what bothers me. It’s never really been any of my business, but if he’s put her in a position where—”

“Hey,” you interrupted. “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

He sighed. “Maybe.” Then, he stood. He continued to fix his gaze on the dark nothingness outside the window, until he finally moved to leave the room.

The discussion ended there; Anakin seemed finished with it for the time being, and you definitely didn’t feel as if you had anything useful to add. You ate together soon after speaking, but after that he wandered back down to the basement. You were tired anyhow, and so instead of following him, you went upstairs to bed. Even on a less-than-stellar night, you knew that was something which would always make you happy to be able to do.

Not too long after you had (it didn’t feel as though it had been too long, anyway— you’d been asleep, or mostly asleep), Anakin did join you. He didn’t say much of anything to you nor you to him, and when you communicated with one another, it wasn’t at all with words.

You were incredibly grateful to have somebody with whom you did not need to use them— not to mention somebody you were coming to know you could always find when you needed him.

...

You’d fallen contentedly back to sleep with Anakin at your side after he’d joined you that night, but when you woke up sometime a few hours later, he wasn’t there anymore. 

As you sat up, you looked around. You listened for him, too, but just as when you’d come in from work, you couldn’t hear a sound. When you got out of bed, your feet took you— for whatever reason— to the window from which you could see the front yard. You looked out of it, and that was where you found him: He was standing at the bottom of the driveway, smoking. You stopped; stared at him a few moments. Part of you thought you should just leave him to think... but, another part of you knew that the emotional side of his brain tended to draw illogical conclusions, when left to its own devices. 

You waited until he had finished his cigarette. When he threw it to the ground, though, and proceeded to pull another one out almost immediately afterward, you decided to join him. After tossing on the nearest set of your own clothes, you descended the stairs and walked outside. It was cool, but not cold; the sky was clear, and the street was very quiet.

He heard you before you knew he had. Without turning, he greeted you as you approached from behind. Then, he apologized for waking you— although it really hadn’t been him. “I’ll come back in soon,” he told you.

“I know,” you said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine— it’s been a night.” You couldn’t really tell how he was feeling right now; at least, not by his voice.

“You’re right,” you acknowledged. “It has been.” Sometimes you still weren’t sure what to say to him; this was one of those times.

“...I’m sorry,” he said to you once more. “For the way I talked to you earlier.”

You almost said, very simply, that it was okay— and it was, but you were curious as to what his thought process had been, during the brief period of time for which he’d berated you. Carefully, you observed, “You said you wouldn’t be angry— but, you sure seemed like you were angry, before you knew that wasn’t my test.”

“I wasn’t angry,” he said, and he startled you with just how quickly he corrected you. “I got scared,” he admitted next, “and not for the reason you might think.” 

He continued to look straight ahead of himself. You watched the end of his cigarette make his face glow dull orange as the street lights hummed above you. Everything smelled like dew and grass and smoke. Fear in Anakin, you contemplated, did tend to look a lot like anger— a programmed response you knew was much older than you were.

You smiled anyway, though, because you also knew that Anakin was not scared of responsibility. Pain, maybe— but you were scared of being hurt, too. “What was it, then?” you asked, because you knew he wouldn’t explain it unless you did.

“I thought you would leave,” he confessed, after appearing to mull over whether he should actually be honest with you about what he’d been afraid of. He didn’t add to what he said; just let it hang in the air.

You finally glanced over at his face, although he didn’t look back quite yet. You’d likely considered the possibility of procreating with Anakin more often than he’d thought of doing so with you over the course of your relationship. This was due, more than anything, to the biological reality that you had more at stake than he did when it came to matters of reproduction. For that reason, too, you’d never been anything less than careful— again; with him, or anybody else.

Another part of your high level of caution as far as pregnancy was concerned, though, had always been a direct result of what you’d seen Anakin himself go through with his own children years ago: Kids could be a joy, certainly— but he had inadvertently shown you that they could also be the cause of enormous pain. You’d witnessed that at a younger age than most people would have had cause to; it had absolutely affected your outlook on life, and on the concept of family.

You mused silently about what you’d have done ten years ago if you’d found yourself carrying Anakin’s child; then, you shook off the feeling that thought inspired, because it was uncomfortable. After that, you considered what you’d do now— you had a decent job, and more options than you could have imagined as a teenager. It wasn’t something you were about to go looking for, but it also wouldn’t be a crisis. Maybe that was part of his fear; that you wouldn’t need him, if you fell pregnant. But, of course, you always needed him— whether he truly recognized it or not.

“Why would you think that?” you asked.

Plainly, he answered, “I’m used to people not trusting me.” 

You supposed he was used to it, but you did trust him— you always had, even when he hadn’t been at his best. There was something inside of him that he’d always expressed through the way he wielded his heart: It told you beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could be relied upon. Again, actual execution aside, you would always have trusted Anakin to mean well. He had been far too good at loving for as long as you’d known him; it was a quality instrumental in making him who he was. However, it was also something which had caused him more pain than anything else over the course of his life— that was easy to see.

“I’ve always trusted you,” you reminded him. You’d told him as much before, but he had already admitted that he regarded himself a slow learner. You didn’t think that was true, necessarily— but if he thought it was, then that was all that really mattered. At least, it was when it came to things like this.

He tossed his smoke to the ground, then. He turned his head to look at you; smiled thinly. “Thanks,” he said.

“You were always wonderful with your kids,” you continued. “Even when it wasn’t easy.” 

You thought back to his teaching them kendo when they were younger; about his having tried so hard to keep himself together for them. Then, you remembered the tears he had shed in his motel room at the prospect of losing them: Those tears had granted you immense insight into what parenthood could really mean. You’d witnessed them not too long before he had told you to go home for good, and had since realized that was the moment you’d actually lost him, back then: Aside from sparing you the worst of himself, he really had needed his family, in a way you wouldn’t have been able to understand at such a young age.

“They deserved a lot better than to have me the way I was,” he said to you.

“Ani—”

“It’s true— there’s nothing I can do to take it back, and it would be shitty not to admit it.”

You smiled, because that was about what you would have expected him to say. You wanted to tell him he’d been fantastic anyway: As far as you were concerned, he truly had been. Padmé must have thought so too, at least after everything that had happened, or he’d never have made it back upstairs with her. You thought about his drive to show you that he could give you more than he could before; considered, maybe, that he felt it was too late to do the same for his children. He was right, in a way— there wasn’t much of anything he could do to make up for what he hadn’t given them, before he’d started to try to fix things. 

“You can be there for them now,” you offered. “They don’t stop needing you when they reach a certain age— or even when they leave home.” Anakin didn’t seem to think very much of Leia’s boyfriend; if he was at all correct in his evaluation of their relationship, she might just find herself in need of her own dad’s help very soon. You wondered if she would approach him if she did, or if Anakin would have to reach out to her himself. You knew the latter would be particularly difficult— however, he was the only person who could make himself do it, now, and you hoped he would if he had to.

He nodded; conceded, “You’re right,” as he appeared to think about one more smoke. He didn’t say anything else.

“Come inside,” you told him. You knew, again, that Anakin tended to over-analyze; while it wasn’t your job to keep him from doing so, you certainly didn’t mind helping to prevent it when you could.

He responded silently; turned himself to face you. He seemed to study you closely as he looked you up and down— he still did that, sometimes. You didn’t mind, but when he did it, it tended to make you feel as though he didn’t quite believe you were really there. You put out your hand; a little tentatively, maybe. To your relief, he took it with his own (he only had one to use right now), and when you began to move in the direction of the front door, he went along with you.

You led him back through the house in the same way; he continued to follow, not letting go of your hand until you were at the top of the stairs. 

Once you were both back in bed, you sidled up closely behind him and whispered, “It’s never too late to fix things you’ve broken— I know you know that, Anakin.”

“It’s easy to feel like I’ve already run out of time with Leia,” he said quietly. He sounded tired, but not exactly sleepy.

You knew that he was worried about her; you guessed that she was worried for herself, too. After all, that’s how you’d have felt, at her age. No matter what she did now, you hoped that she would allow her father an opportunity to prove to her that he could be there for her, even in the absence of her mom. They both deserved it, and it seemed to you that a chance to prove himself to his daughter was something Anakin truly needed. 

“You haven’t,” you assured him, and he was so quiet and still that you couldn’t tell whether or not he’d fallen asleep after that. You guessed he hadn’t, and that was okay— silence, from Ani, typically indicated that he agreed with you, on some level.

Second chances were hard things to come by, but he seemed to somehow attract them. Although they’d been graciously plentiful for him over the years, you knew first-hand that he was not prone to letting them go to waste. You sincerely hoped he had one at his disposal right now; you’d even help him to make full use of it, if you could... but, it was ultimately his own job to repair what he had damaged. 

Luckily for him (and perhaps for Leia as well), Anakin— aside from loving people— _was_ very good at fixing things.


	16. Push

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what he’s listening to (in my own imagining of this scene) is _High Society_ by Kid Ory from 1945. It’s fast Dixieland Jazz with lots of horn.

You rarely heard Anakin listen to music— or watch television, or read books which weren’t technical manuals, for that matter. You’d always supposed that had been because there was enough noise in his head already, without the external stimulation of any sort of media. One day, though, you returned to the house at night and were greeted by a very distinct sound— you weren’t necessarily familiar with it; it _was_ music— but it was _old_ ; in fact, it sounded nearly as though it could have been being played through time.

Since it was coming from the basement, that was where you headed in the interest of investigating it— if nothing else, you were curious. You knocked, first... which prompted a lowering of the music’s volume, indicating that Anakin was at least awake. You went on down the stairs, then, wondering what kind of mood he might be in.

When you reached the door to his preferred part of the space, you nudged it ajar with your foot and entered; smiled at the sight of him. He looked as if he’d just stood up from the bed, but not as if he’d necessarily been sleeping. He had his phone in his left hand; swiped at something with his thumb, and rendered the space silent. He smiled back at you, but he looked distracted. He set the phone down on the bed as you approached him.

“Hey,” you said. 

“Hey.” He pulled out his smokes; shook one out of the pack.

“Sorry if I bugged you,” you told him. You hadn’t meant to interrupt his thoughts.

“You didn’t,” he said. He added after a moment’s consideration, “I probably needed to be bugged, actually.” He spoke through the filter of his cigarette as he lit it up and you sat down together.

You were grateful to him for saying it. “What was that?” you asked, as you motioned to his phone. Its screen was still lit up.

“Huh?” He noticed where you’d directed your attention, then; answered, “Oh— it’s from when I was a kid.”

“You’re not _that_ old,” you laughed, and to your relief, he laughed, too. That music had sounded as though it might have been from as far back as World War Two.

“No, but they were still playing it on the radio when my mom was younger.” He shrugged, “She always enjoyed it— so I got to know it, too.”

Hearing him say that made you smile. “That’s nice,” you told him; followed by, “I like it.”

“So do I,” he said. He looked relatively content, but far-away. He was quiet for a while.

“You okay?” you asked him, after some time had passed.

“I’m fine,” he answered, which was predictable, although you suspected it was not entirely dishonest: He didn’t seem sad or angry; just thoughtful. 

“Hear from Leia lately?” It had been a couple of weeks since Anakin had made his discovery in the bathroom on the main floor. He’d seemed a bit more subdued than usual since then, but you supposed you could understand why. 

“She brushed me off.” He blew out some smoke; continued, “It’s about what I expected, though.”

“So, is she...?”

“Yeah.”

“You asked Luke, didn’t you?”

He shot you a look; started to answer a bit defensively, “Leia wasn’t going to tell me, and I—”

“It’s okay,” you interrupted, before he could get worked up. “I understand.” You took a moment to think before asking, “What are you going to do, then?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“It’s not what you think,” he said, and you realized he’d likely found himself saying that a lot (and to a variety of people) over the course of his life. 

You wondered if he happened to recall the same moment you were recalling: The last time you’d been together— years ago— you had both realized that your connection was essentially unsustainable. You’d asked him what he was going to do, and ‘nothing’ had been his answer. This was a bit different than that, though, and you knew it. Maybe he didn’t know you knew.

“If I push her to talk to me,” he went on, “she’ll only try harder to keep away from me.”

“You’re right,” you affirmed, but you didn’t know what else to say. 

He sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way— but, I wish her mom were still around right now.”

You weren’t about to take it the wrong way. You understood what he was trying to say. “I get it— and I’m sorry. But... you know she’s not.”

“I know.” He smiled, then, but only briefly. You were both quiet again; this time for a bit longer. He got up to put out his cigarette, but returned to sit by your side. He still didn’t say anything.

Finally, you ventured, “Tell me something about _your_ mom.” You knew he’d lost her when he was young, and that her death had deeply affected him. You didn’t know much about what his relationship with her had been like— or what she’d been like, herself.

“Oh.” He seemed to come back from somewhere. Then, he appeared to think. His smile returned to him as he recalled, “She didn’t like my racer.”

“What?”

He laughed at himself. “It was stupid— just a wooden box with a set of old tricycle wheels.”

“You’ve always been building things,” you observed offhandedly, as you glanced over at the tools on his desk.

“I guess so,” he shrugged. Then, “I’d ride it down the hill behind the last place we lived before she died. I used to try to go as fast as I could— and sometimes I’d flip the thing right over.” He chuckled, “She fucking _hated_ it.”

A grin spread across your own face at his reminiscing; you didn’t see him do it often— at least, not like this. Not in a way that seemed to make him happy. “She thought you’d get hurt?”

“Or killed, but I never did die.” He paused. “She was always worried about me.” His voice took on a tinge of sadness as the last of those words left his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

He shook his head. “Don’t be. I was thinking about her anyway.”

“That’s sweet,” you observed. You liked that Anakin still thought about the woman who’d raised him.

“You think so?” He looked skeptical.

“My mom told me that good men love their mothers.”

He laughed loudly. _”All_ men love their mothers.”

That made you smile warmly; reach over to touch his leg.

He sighed and apologized, seemingly out of nowhere.

“What are _you_ sorry for?”

He shifted uncomfortably; hesitated before answering, “...For everything— for Luke being an ass until I goaded him into hitting me; for Leia and I being weird with each other. You’ve already put up with enough of this from me.” A distinct look of frustration came over his face. “I— _fuck_. I wanted this to be nicer for you this time— for us.” Finally, he appeared to become embarrassed as he finished, “I’m apologizing for not being able to pull it off.”

 _Ani, don’t get like this._ “I love your sense of responsibility,” you said carefully, “but you don’t need to be so hard on yourself.”

“I feel like I do. If I’d done things right with them to begin with, _this_ wouldn’t be so—”

“Stop.” You squeezed his leg. “Did you know you were going to meet me, before? Did you know you were going to meet me _again_ when their mom died?”

“No, but—”

“So it’s okay. Just do your best now.” He didn’t say anything right away, so you added— even though he hated to hear it— “You’re already really impressing me, Anakin. All the time.” He’d always impressed you. 

To your surprise, he didn’t object. Instead, he somewhat uncharacteristically asked for your advice: “How do I let her know I’m really here, then? _Without_ putting her off?”

You answered without pause, “Keep telling her— just do it gently. She’s going to need your help with this at some point, whether she knows it yet or not.” 

You thought about how dependent you still were on your parents at Leia’s age; remembered how frightened you had been at the prospect of them withdrawing their support. That made you realize that for all he might have done wrong, Anakin was a completely different sort of parent. He might not always have been perfect (or even alright), but one thing you knew for certain was that his love for his kids was truly unconditional: He would always, _always_ be there for them.

“I’m scared,” he said. You liked that he’d apparently come to feel he could admit that to you. His fear— when he experienced it— didn’t make him storm off on you so often anymore; didn’t _always_ seem to make him angry, now. You supposed he felt safe enough with you to actually allow himself to feel afraid.

“Scared of what?” you asked. It could have been any number of things.

“Scared she’s going keep hating me.” His expression hardened; he looked down at the floor. “I almost killed her mom, and then I spent the first ten years of her life sitting down here crying about it. She has no reason to trust me— and now I’m expecting her to accept my help?”

“Anakin—”

 _”This is why I’m a piece of shit.”_ He went to grab another cigarette.

You scooted over a bit closer to him; shifted your hand to his arm, now, as opposed to his leg. He stopped reaching for his smokes, but he didn’t look you in the eye again just yet.

“You’re not a piece of shit,” you said. “I know you know that.” You hadn’t expected him to slip into quite this state of mind, but he had, and you knew that together the two of you were more than capable of pulling him out of it.

You hadn’t known what to do with the pain of someone who was desperately afraid of losing one or both of his kids, before... now, though, you had more knowledge at your disposal, in addition to a sense of self-assuredness you hadn’t yet developed back then. It allowed you to do a better job of simply being there for him, when someone to be there for him was what he needed. You’d always wanted to be that person for Anakin.

“I do know,” he eventually admitted, which you appreciated very much. His voice was quiet; almost raspy. You were glad he’d held out on lighting that next cigarette.

“If you know,” you said, “then showing Leia that you love her shouldn’t seem impossible.” 

“She thinks I’m useless without her mom.”

“Show her you’re not, then— I know you like to prove yourself,” you said— and you did. Everything about him absolutely screamed it; from the strength of his convictions (especially given the fact that some of them only made sense to him), to the condition of his body, to the sheer ostentatiousness with which he did things like smoke, and shout. If anyone was strong enough to demonstrate that they could be different— better— it was Anakin. Everything you knew about him told you that he was absolutely not afraid to put forth an effort for the benefit of the people he loved.

With that thought in mind, you peered into his eyes; he was finally looking at you again. He was smiling, too, which you hadn’t anticipated.

“...Okay,” he said. “I will.” 

You smiled back, because he’d made you feel proud of him. Then, you squeezed his arm. You sat in a very old, very familiar kind of silence together until you grabbed his phone and handed it to him, so that you could recline on the mattress. He shrugged, turned his mother’s music back on, and joined you after putting his device out of the way.

You put your arms around him and closed your eyes; ended up sleeping there together like that for the entire night, although you hadn’t intended it.

You supposed you’d forgotten how comfortable that little basement bed could actually be.

...

You were late— you’d slept in, somehow; perhaps because so little of the sun’s morning light had entered through the narrow windows in the basement. You had to be at work; Anakin didn’t right now, and so— with a kiss goodbye— you’d left him to wake up by himself in relatively quick time. As you walked out the front door, you mused that it was nice to be able to leave him and know exactly when you’d be seeing him again.

Your thought was interrupted suddenly as you took your first step outside, by a voice which spoke to you in an overtly familiar— and very forward— manner.

“He’s too old for you,” said Leia, stopping you in your tracks. 

Grown-up now, she bore a resemblance to her mother which was similar to the one shared by Luke and Anakin, and it struck you. However, while Padmé had typically exuded a distinct air of calm (which in retrospect had been quite impressive, given the situation in which she’d been mired at the time), her daughter did not— or at least, she didn’t right now.

“He’ll hurt you,” she continued, as if the last time you’d spoken to her had been just last week, as opposed to ten years prior. “He might not mean to, but that’s what he does— he hurts people.”

“I—”

“Did you hear what I said? Luke told me what was going on over here, and I can’t believe our dad has him convinced that this is okay.” She narrowed her vision at you (much as her father might have, really, but you weren’t about to point it out right now); informed you decidedly, “It’s _not_ okay.”

What were you supposed to say to that? Suddenly you were grateful for the understanding Luke had shown you, even if it had been limited at first. You ran through a few different possibilities in your head concerning how you might answer her, but could only come up with, “We slept in— your dad’s just waking up,” which might have been the wrong thing to say.

She shook her head at you. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, and she sounded close to exasperated. You reminded yourself that she likely wasn’t entirely feeling herself right now; however, you also knew that she’d always been both very insightful, and significantly more assertive than her twin brother. This really wasn’t entirely unlike her— part of you wished you’d had that strength of mind when you’d been closer to her age, while the rest of you contemplated how to answer her.

You fell back on the same thing you’d said to Luke, when he’d asked a similar question: “I like spending time with your dad,” you told her simply, because it was a very honest (yet not overtly emotional) response.

Somewhat unexpectedly, “He used you last time— _didn’t he?_ ” You shouldn’t have been surprised that she might have inferred as much. “I know you cared about him,” she continued. “Luke thought you didn’t, but I never forgot the look on your face when I saw you with him in the kitchen. I didn’t really know what it meant until later, but when it clicked, I understood— and I couldn’t _believe_ my own dad had hurt somebody who’d looked at him that way.” She paused; pursed her lips. “Someone besides my mother.”

That was a lot to say all at once— but, you supposed it had been building up for a while. Anyway, Leia had always been the boldest member of her own family (with, perhaps, the exception of her own dad). You remembered enjoying talking to her— maybe you still would have; however, this wasn’t the conversation you wanted to be having right now.

“I’m sorry, Leia,” you said— somewhat bewildered at her level of forthcoming. “I’m not sure what to—”

“Never mind,” she cut you off, seeming to decide that she didn’t have time or energy for this right now. “I’m just here to get some things for Luke, anyway.”

“Your dad’s in the kitchen. He’s—”

“Smoking a cigarette, isn’t he?”

“He is, but—”

“Then I’ll just have to try and hold my breath until I get upstairs,” she finished, and she went on past you and into the house without another word.

Once you heard the door click shut, you continued to your car. You were already late, and there was nothing you could do about whatever interaction Anakin would (or wouldn’t) have with his daughter, once she got inside.

You hoped that while it was happening, he would have it in him to remember your conversation from last night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My explanation for the horns: 
> 
> If Darth Vader ever listened to music at all, I imagine that at least some of it would have been the old Cantina-style Jazz he probably grew up hearing on Tatooine. 
> 
> Besides that, Anakin is kind of weird; I think Dixieland really suits him— and I also don’t think he _ever_ entirely stops missing his mom.
> 
> (Speaking of ‘this’ AU Anakin’s mom: If you’re interested in what I had happen to her, there is a succinct account of it starting on paragraph 19 of chapter 3 of my other story, ‘And One For All’. It’s actually fairly irrelevant to _this_ story, but on the off-chance anyone was going to ask— the answer lies there.)


	17. Doubt

Anakin’s encounter with Leia the morning after you’d rushed off late for work had been just about what you would have expected: Brief, and strained. He apologized to you as you entered the house that afternoon, but he also seemed distracted; close to jittery. He was very alert, but distant as well— and every time you spoke to him, you came under the distinct impression that you’d interrupted a very important thought.

Aside from telling him that he didn’t need to be sorry for what Leia had said, you mostly just left him alone about it: There wasn’t much you could do to help, because there was nothing you could do change an impression of Anakin it had seemingly taken his daughter her whole life to construct. You felt guilty for contributing to it—but again, you couldn’t change the way Leia saw your relationship with her dad, and you were far beyond the point where you’d have considered ending it.

At least, you thought, she hadn’t cut him off completely.

“I’m sorry,” he reiterated, as he stepped into the bedroom after you late that same night. He’d been quiet for a long time prior to saying it; the sound of his voice almost jarred you.

“You don’t have to be,” you reminded him. “Your kids are adults; I don’t expect you to try to control them.” You thought for a moment; mused aloud, “...Actually, it would be sort of weird if you _could_ still control them, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess,” he answered, with absolutely no intonation. He began to get rid of his shirt; once he’d removed it, he started to detach his right forearm from the rest of himself. After he’d both done that and put his prosthesis away safely, he sat down on the edge of the bed half-undressed and stared at the window on the other side of the room.

“What are you thinking about, Anakin?” 

Asking things directly, you found, was the surest way to get an actual answer out of him. Beating around the bush typically either annoyed him, or else he didn’t seem to register that you were doing it. Anakin wasn’t a subtle person: Being vague with him rarely got you anywhere. 

He hesitated; seemed to be struggling a bit to find the correct words with which to answer you. Finally, with obvious anxiety, “...You know you don’t have to do this, don’t you?”

 _We’re past this._ “I’m already here,” you said simply. “This is where I want to be.”

Quietly, he answered, “I love you, and I don’t want to waste your time.”

“What are you talking about?” You sat down on the other side of the bed; turned to look at his back from over your shoulder.

“I’m talking about something I was too selfish to consider until I had it pointed out to me,” he said.

“Do you think you could tell me what it is?” What had he been thinking about all day?

He looked back at you too. You stared at each other from opposite sides of the bed; the mattress seemed to take up a lot of space between you, right then.

“I’m going to die before you do,” he informed you from over his own shoulder. “You’re going to waste a bunch of time on me, and then I’m going to die— and _then_ you’ll be alone.” 

You sighed, because you had already thought about your difference in age— and you didn’t share that particular perspective on your being so much younger than he was. Maybe you should have told him sooner than this (and in greater detail) how you actually did feel about it.

_Better late than never._

“I know you’re older than I am, Ani. I’ve always known, and if it was going to bother me, it would have started bothering me a long time ago.” Cautiously you added, “I’ve already thought about what it’s going to be like to lose you.” 

It wasn’t a pleasant series of considerations, but it was realistic. Just as when you had watched him make you those perfect middle-eastern eggs he’d known how to cook for as long as you had been alive, you were sure it didn’t matter to you; that it likely never would. Someone your own age could get hit by a bus or have an aneurysm just as easily as Anakin, and you knew it. The inevitability of losing him was worth being with him; you’d found that out the first time he’d disappeared from your life. 

There was a reason you’d never regretted your time with him— and the reason was that you really had never stopped loving him.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said. “I always should have left you alone.” 

He sounded genuinely ashamed of himself. Was this the result of his conversation with Leia? No wonder she had been worried about him, if their interactions frequently affected him like this. You appreciated how direct she tended to be, but you also knew that her father could be incredibly sensitive— and that he loved her very much. Maybe she didn’t realize that he did, in fact, take her seriously; respect her opinions.

“It’s too late for that now,” you told him. You might have added something else, but you really wanted those words to sink in. 

He shifted his gaze down toward the blanket covering the mattress. “...Most women want families, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t really know,” you said. You were only one woman; you certainly couldn’t speak for the rest of them. 

“...Did you realize that I’ve never, _ever_ asked you about that? Not even once?” He was right; he hadn’t— the closest he’d ever come had been when he’d found Leia’s test, and the subject had been dropped in relatively short order.

“Why would you?” Your focus during your time with Anakin— all of it— had always been solidly trained upon the two of you.

“If I’d been thinking about anybody but myself, I’d have thought about whether or not I was wasting the sort of time you only have so much of,” he observed. That was poignant, and you appreciated it, but...

“That’s not for you to worry about,” you informed him, and you meant it. “I’m happy with you— _you_.” With another sigh, you looked down for a moment at the blanket, yourself. When you shifted your own gaze back upward, you pulled your legs onto the bed and turned your entire body around so that you were finally facing him— or, his back at least. You sat cross-legged and confessed, “All I ever wanted was to spend more time with you, Anakin.”

He winced as if your admission had stung him. Then he asked earnestly, “What if you never had a choice?”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“It means, what if Leia is right— what if you really were too young?” He laughed, “That was the one thing about it that Padmé never mentioned, you know.” She wouldn’t have, you realized: She’d _married_ the little boy who had fallen in love with her at first sight, and she’d done it at her earliest opportunity. Perhaps she really had understood the connection you shared with her husband, even if she hadn’t especially appreciated it.

Maybe that had made it easier for her to forgive him.

“Falling for you was simple, Ani, but it wasn’t your fault that it happened.”

He shook his head. “I never thought enough of myself before to believe that you were spending time with me for any reason other than that you felt sorry for me. But I was a lot older than you, wasn’t I? In a way that stood out even more back then than it does now?”

You supposed he was right. Ten years ago, you’d been living in fairly different worlds; your connection truly had been incredibly unlikely, and— perhaps— a little bit inappropriate. Now, though, you’d been mired in the adult world for more than a decade; knew your way around it. It put you on even footing with him, and made the twenty years between the two of you seem like a bit less significant of a gap.

“Sure,” you said. “But I didn’t spend time with you out of pity.”

“I didn’t understand that then— _but I should have.”_ He looked to be getting frustrated with himself, now. 

You decided to try something different. “Did you feel like _you_ ever had a choice? With me, _or_ with your wife?” 

“Not even for a second,” he answered readily.

“So— do you see, then? Love doesn’t give us a choice,” you said. “Leia is smart, but she’s barely twenty years old.” One of the things that had always made Anakin seem younger than his actual age was his tendency to perceive things in stark black-and-white. It was a quality almost universally associated with youth; however, Ani had it in spades— somewhat less unexpectedly, it seemed right now that his daughter did, too. 

“You mentioned that her boyfriend is flaky, didn’t you?” you asked.

“I did,” he said. You could hear the disdain creeping into his words; even just those two of them.

“Well,” you told him, “Maybe by the time she’s decided what she wants to do with him, she’ll understand the way we feel about each other a little bit better.”

Something in what you said must have appealed to his own unique sense of logic, because he didn’t argue with you. You looked at one another quietly; you examined his face, and he seemed to study yours in return— as was his habit.

“I love you,” you said, when he’d been silent for a while. “I love you in a way that stops me from caring about how old we both are, or about whether being with you seems right or wrong to anyone else.” It was also why you’d never demanded that he quit smoking, use fewer curse words, or spend less time in his basement. For better or for worse, you’d never cared about any of those things; they were superficial, when held up to the essence of who he really was.

Even if she was a bit off-the-mark about your relationship with her father, it probably was better— for his own sake— that Anakin had somebody like Leia in his life. You wished they got along better. 

He had ceased looking at you from over his shoulder by then; his back was still turned to you. You reached up to run your hand along his arm. His right one was closest, and so you trailed your fingertips gently over the complex network of scars and tiny pockmarks which encapsulated his bicep. 

You heard him take a very deep breath; then, he shifted so that he was finally half-facing you. 

Through damp eyes and an incredibly beautiful smile, he told you quietly, “I love you just the same way.”

“Trust that Leia will see that, too, then,” you said.

“...Do you really think she will?” 

“ _Yes._ Just give her time, and do what you said you were going to do. Show her who you can really be for her. It makes sense that she would doubt this, because— you said it yourself— she doubts you, too.”

“Why don’t _you_ doubt me?” He must still have thought you had reason to— maybe he _was_ a tiny bit of a slow learner.

“Because I can see you.” You’d always seen him, even when no one else could; even when he might rather not have been seen.

You were both silent again after that; there was nothing else that needed to be said. Eventually Anakin would lie down on the bed; you’d follow him, but not before getting undressed yourself. Once you had, you coaxed him out of his pants and underneath the covers. After joining him there, you proceeded to reassure him that he was, indeed, visible.

Anakin always had appreciated that.

...

“Where should I drop you off?”

It wasn’t the next day, and it wasn’t the day following that one, either— however, it was not _too_ long after your nighttime chat about what Leia had said that Anakin approached you early in the morning. He asked if he could catch a ride with you on your way to work, which in itself wasn’t too strange: There were lots of shops and services located there; he could have needed anything from new shoes to a root canal.

What was odd was his attitude toward you; he was _just_ irritable enough that morning that he didn’t seem quite like himself— but, then, Anakin not quite being ‘himself’ was actually fairly emblematic of his character. You didn’t bother him about it; figured he might just be annoyed that he had to run an errand in the first place.

You’d just pulled into the sizeable parking lot surrounding your own office complex when you had asked him where he needed to be. He’d been mostly quiet throughout the ride; he knew you didn’t like for him to smoke in your car, and so had fiddled with his prosthetic fingers in his lap instead for nearly the entire drive.

“Just park wherever you’d normally park,” he said, squinting out the window.

You began to offer, “This place is huge; I can—”

_“Just park wherever you’d normally park!”_

“Relax!” What was wrong with him this morning?

“...I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you alright?” you finally asked.

“Yes— yes, I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

You parked where you would normally have parked, then, and you both exited the car. As soon as you did, Anakin retrieved and lit a cigarette.

“Are you going to be alright getting home?” 

“Yes,” he told you— and you’d have offered him your own car keys anyhow, if you hadn’t thought that would annoy him further.

You both began to walk after that, in the same direction. When you reached the doors through which you typically entered the building, he went with you; when you called the elevator to retrieve you from the ground floor, he stepped inside of it and you rode it upstairs together.

The office housing the services offered by you and your colleagues was the only one on the floor at which you both exited. You stood in the hallway together a moment; he looked straight ahead of himself, seemingly waiting for you to go first.

Since it had dawned on you what he was doing by this point, you looked over at him and smiled, “Wow— you know I’m proud of you, don’t you?”

 _”Please_ don’t say that,” he implored, as calmly as it seemed he could manage.

“I’m sorry,” you conceded, and you walked in ahead of him without saying anything else. Your smile did not leave your face. He didn’t enter the space right after you; in fact, he appeared to wait until he knew you would be out of sight before coming in himself. That was fine; he’d pleasantly surprised you just by being there to begin with. 

To your knowledge, Leia had asked Anakin to do just one thing since her mother had died— and that one thing had been to come here and talk to someone about how he felt. Technically he had already done it; however, in practice, everybody (including you) knew that you couldn’t help Anakin in the way Leia had requested he be helped. You loved him far too unconditionally for that.

The way you felt about him, however, was also why you wanted him to feel better. 

You wanted him to feel connected to his daughter, too; in fact, you had a very strong feeling that being on good terms with her could, in and of itself, go a long way toward making him happier overall. You knew that he still carried a lot of regret about the way he’d acted for the duration of his kids’ early years; maybe being here could ease that for him— and for them, too.

You compartmentalized your thoughts; got to work in relatively quick time. You near-forgot Anakin had even been in the building at all, in fact— until you glanced out your window about an hour and a half after you’d first arrived, and saw a taxi pulling away from what looked like a small pile of crushed cigarette butts on the curb outside.

Your mind wandered back in time, at that point; back to when you’d last helped him dress in the fanciest of his old military uniforms— it had been perfectly-structured, intricately-designed, and (somewhat impractically, you now realized) completely impossible for someone with a single functioning hand to put on unassisted. More than any of those things, though, it had looked incredibly handsome on him... which, of course, he had hated hearing you say aloud. You’d made sure never to tell him again; however, you had never stopped thinking it.

You would have to remember, when you saw him later that afternoon, to similarly refrain from telling him that he had impressed you— no matter how impressed you actually were.

It was the kind of adjustment you were more than willing to make for the sake of being with somebody like Anakin.


	18. Trust

“Is my dad here?”

You were in the kitchen; you had been alone, but now you weren’t: Leia was there, too. You hadn’t heard her walk into the house, which was almost certainly for the simple reason that you hadn’t been paying attention. You were away from work because you had been feeling under-the-weather that day— but, Anakin was not at home.

“No... but he won’t be long, if you want to wait for him,” you said.

It was exactly two weeks since he had accompanied you unexpectedly to your office; he’d surprised you once again by going back there there this morning— by himself, and entirely of his own volition. Leia had no idea that he was exactly where she wanted him to be right now; however, you didn’t feel quite comfortable telling her just where he’d gone. You assumed he’d let her know himself, when he was ready.

She sighed; looked around the room. When she didn’t say anything, you ventured, “Whatever Luke still has here should be either upstairs or in the garage, if you—”

“That’s not what I’m here for,” she interrupted— without telling you what she _was_ here for.

“...Well, then, like I mentioned, you won’t have to wait long for your dad,” you answered, knowing you sounded somewhat stilted. Anakin had left almost two hours ago; he was due to pull into the driveway any minute now, actually. If she hadn’t come to pick something up, then you assumed she must be here to talk to her father about one thing or another. You hoped she wouldn’t change her mind about it because of his absence— especially given where he was.

“It figures he wouldn’t be around the one time I actually come here to see _him_ ,” she said.

“He didn’t know you were coming,” you reminded her. “Or else I’m sure he would have been here.”

That seemed to strike a bit of a nerve. “You defend him the same way my mother used to,” she said— and she sounded exactly as irritated right now as Anakin sometimes did. Just as before, it seemed that Leia wasn’t at all afraid to be extremely forthright with you... at least, not when it came to how she felt about her dad. You supposed that made some measure of sense.

Also like before, though, you really weren’t sure how to respond to it.

You tried, “All I meant to say is that he isn’t trying to upset you.”

She shook her head, “He doesn’t have to try.”

You were the one who sighed, this time. “...He’s actually trying pretty hard _not_ to upset you right now, you know,” you said, because you felt like you needed to.

“I guess I hadn’t noticed.” She glanced in the direction of the staircase; seemed to consider something. “...You said he wouldn’t be long?” she asked. She sounded more tentative than annoyed, now.

“I did. I’ll even leave you be while you wait for him, if you want,” and you started to prepare to exit the room.

“...You don’t have to go,” she said, before you could. You paused and so did she; you were both silent for a few long moments.

Finally, you started, “I understand if you’re not thrilled with me being—”

“It’s not that!” Again, she couldn’t help but sound a bit like Anakin when she spoke that way to you; it might have made you smile, under different circumstances. She looked at you; asked, “Didn’t you hear me outside, before?” 

“Yes,” you told her. “And you were right— he doesn’t _mean_ to hurt anybody.”

She shook her head at you, much like she had during your previous encounter. “I can’t believe you let him rope you into coming back here after what he did ten years ago.”

“He wasn’t in a—”

 _”’Good place’?”_ she finished for you. “Now you sound like Luke.”

You were beginning to feel even more as if you were at a loss for words. There didn’t seem to be anything you could say to shift Leia’s perspective on her dad; not without delving more deeply into her relationship with him (or your own) than you felt you should.

You were almost grateful when she continued for you, “I liked you, you know. When I was little, I thought you were _cool._ I loved my mom more than anything, but whenever she wasn’t working, she was always completely wrapped up in my dad; in trying to ‘fix’ him. _She had to be._ You didn’t have to do that, though— or, I thought you didn’t. Then I saw you kissing him, and when I figured it all out, I was finally sure that the reason I never felt like I could trust him was because he _wasn’t trustworthy._ ” She almost seemed to plead, “You should know that better than anybody, but here you are again anyway, and I just don’t understand it— any of it.”

At least you finally had something to say. “For all the mistakes your dad’s made— and he knows he’s made a bunch— you have to be able to see that he loves you, and that he loved your mom. He doesn’t always do the right thing, but he does always try.”

You wanted to add that you weren’t trying to ‘fix’ him... but, that would only have been relevant to you. Anakin was someone who had nearly always seemed to you to be swimming against a very strong current; it was easy for him to make you proud, because you knew that some things were especially hard for him. You were glad Leia didn’t really understand that, while at the same time wishing a little bit that she did.

“He sure had a funny way of trying,” she countered.

 _She’s not wrong,_ you thought. What you said, however, was, “He’s a bit different; I’ll give you that.”

Flatly, “‘Different’?”

“That’s how I always saw him,” you told her carefully. You realized, then, that it had been a lot easier to speak about this to Luke, in spite of his ire having mostly been directed at you as opposed to his dad. It was a lot more difficult to justify Anakin’s actions than your own, after all. 

“I swear to God he’s not all there sometimes,” said Leia, and right then it seemed more as though she were talking to the walls of the house than she was to you.

It shouldn’t have, but her comment gave you cause to stifle a laugh. “That’s one way of looking at it,” you told her.

“If you know how he is, then why are you putting up with it?” she asked. _”Again?”_ She truly did seem confused; exasperated.

You shifted uncomfortably on your feet, then. You hadn’t said it to Luke, because you hadn’t wanted to have to defend a purely emotional point; however, Leia was not leaving you with much choice. 

“I love your dad— _a lot_ ,” you admitted, not without some reluctance. You added for qualification, “I know he’s not perfect, but he’s also not cruel,” as you tried to meet her gaze. “It hurts him that nobody seems to trust him; it always has. I hate seeing him hurt, and so I don’t mind giving him an extra chance or two to prove himself. He’s... well, he’s worth that to me.”

She seemed to absorb what you said; however, she also looked to be deciding whether she could be as honest with you as you could tell she wanted to be. She must have figured it was worth a try, because she asked you more quietly than she’d said anything else so far, “...Do you have any idea what it was like growing up around him?”

You shook your head, because you didn’t— not even a little bit. 

She looked down at the floor and furrowed her brow. “He drank nearly every day that I can remember,” she told you. “He yelled, argued, broke things, slammed doors, and took up what felt like every second of my mom’s time— and when he _wasn’t_ doing any of those things, he was hiding from us downstairs.”

“He worked hard to change those things,” you reminded her gently, although you had never fully considered the perspective on Anakin that his daughter was offering you right now. 

“He only ‘changed’ because he was scared of getting kicked out again— I know because he waited until he got caught using _you_ to do it.”

“I never felt ‘used’ by your dad, Leia,” you corrected her. In a voice still tinged with sadness you confessed, “Abandoned, maybe— but that was only until I understood what he was really afraid of losing.”

She looked skeptical. “What did he tell _you_?”

“He never told me much of anything— not back then,” you admitted, “but I do know that he was always more scared of losing you and your brother than anything else.”

“He barely wanted to be near us to begin with,” she pointed out, and you could certainly see how it might have felt that way.

Maybe you shouldn’t have, but you felt you had at least a partial responsibility to correct her, “...I think it’s more that he was _scared_ to be near you than that he didn’t _want_ to be.”

“He doesn’t get to be scared! Not like that— he had a responsibility, and he completely blew it off for years. Why do you think my mom had to hire you in the first place? It might have been worse that he did it to us, but he kind of did it to you too, didn’t he? How can _you_ not see _that_?”

It was clear that you and Leia were looking at Anakin from fairly different perspectives; which, really, was perfectly reasonable. To her, he must have seemed like somewhat of a looming spectre; from your point of view, though, he was someone who’d been hurt. He’d been hurt badly enough, you knew, that to do things which seemed ‘normal’ to others was— to him— more like dragging himself out of a pit. Something about that obvious and constant effort of his had appealed to you greatly from the very moment you’d met him; however, it was logical that it wouldn’t have been evident to Leia, particularly as a child. 

Anyway, it shouldn’t have been— she had deserved a better dad just the same way Anakin had deserved a better chance at being one.

Right then, you imagined him alone with the twins as babies, as he’d described. You pictured him feeling discouraged and rejected, along with remorseful and alone. That hurt, you thought, would have simply been piled atop the hurt from when he’d been injured, and from the loss he’d endured in his childhood, too. It might have been the wrong thing to do, but who wouldn’t have had the urge to retreat from more of that same sort of pain? 

Anakin had fashioned for himself a suit of armour, of sorts, over a period of many years— it had been made out of liquor, cigarettes, anger, and isolation; parts of it still remained enmeshed with him to this day. It only made sense that it would have taken time (and lots of it) for his family, himself, you, or anybody else to even begin to chip at the outermost layer of that self-encasement enough to have it actually start coming off.

“Everyone gets to be scared,” you said. “Your dad knows he made a lot of bad choices when you were younger, but he also wants to show you that he can do better now, even if it seems too late.” You stopped for a moment to collect your thoughts before continuing, “He can’t go back in time, but he can—”

“Who can’t go back in time?”

Anakin’s interjection caused both you and Leia to turn your heads. He had just stepped into view from the foyer, and he was carrying something in a plastic bag— but, you couldn’t make out quite what it was.

“Nobody can,” you said.

 _”You_ can’t,” said Leia, looking at her dad. 

With a half-smile, “Believe me— I know,” and he walked up to the table; set down the bag. Upon closer examination, it appeared to be food. You looked up at him quizzically.

His smile spread as he informed you, “It’s soup.” 

“...Soup?” you asked.

He looked between you and Leia; must have sensed something of the discussion you’d been having before he walked in. 

“...Soup,” he confirmed, as his expression faded. He added as he let his gaze linger on you, “...Because you’re sick.”

“Oh!” you exclaimed, because you hadn’t quite registered his intent right away (although now that you did understand, it _was_ very much appreciated). Then, you smiled; told him, “Thanks,” as he began to dig with his left hand into the bag he’d set down.

As he freed the container, he told you “It has shrimp in it,” followed very closely by, “ _Dead_ ones.”

That must have made you grin in just the wrong way; Leia finally spoke up, then: “Dad?”

He turned to her. “I might not be able to time-travel,” he said, “but I can go back out and get soup for you, too— if you want.”

She seemed a bit taken off-guard by him; answered, “No— no, that’s okay.” She appeared to gather her thoughts for a moment; then, “...I actually need you to look at something for me at home.”

“Something like what?”

Leia proceeded to explain that the single washing machine in the laundry room in her small apartment building was malfunctioning, and that her landlord wasn’t exactly eager to do much of anything about it. Anakin asked her first if she had tools, which she did; then, he asked her if she was prepared to be a right hand for him, if he came in need of one. 

She was, and so once you’d expressed your thanks for the soup, the two of them went off to Leia’s home together, in her car. You didn’t know when he’d back, because you didn’t know how long it would take to fix the washer.

That was fine with you, of course: You’d just become more aware than ever of the fact that Anakin and his daughter were desperately in need of the sort of time with one another that her broken appliance had afforded them, and you very much wanted them to have it.

You’d always, _always_ had faith in him... and you knew that if he only kept trying, you would soon not feel quite so much as if you were the only person who did.

...

You awoke on the couch later (you didn’t know precisely how much later it was) to the sound of the front door opening; peered out at Anakin through bleary eyes as he came back inside the house. He was by himself.

“Fix the washer?” you asked. You were barely conscious yet, but you were still curious as to how things had gone.

He slid off his shoes, approached the sofa where you were laying, and knelt down beside it; right next to your head. “It’s as good as new— I hope.” With a smile, he added, “We’ll see whether or not my phone goes off in the next hour or two, though.”

You wanted to tell him that you were proud of him (you’d found yourself wanting to tell him that a lot, lately), but as always, you knew he wouldn’t want to hear it. You said, “Thanks again for the soup,” instead, and stretched your arm out toward him. He grasped your hand; held it firmly in the natural one of his own.

“Thank _you_ for getting Leia to wait for me,” he answered, and he gave you a squeeze as he kissed the back of your wrist.

“I didn’t make her stay,” you told him. “She wanted to wait for you.” She had— if she hadn’t, she simply would have left. You were curious as to how much she’d told Anakin of your chat in the kitchen; asked carefully, “Did she _say_ I made her stick around?”

He chuckled, “She didn’t have to.” 

After that he leaned in for a kiss; you hesitated, told him, “I don’t want to make you sick.” You still didn’t feel entirely well. 

He recalculated his trajectory at your objection; his lips ended up just below your ear as opposed to on your mouth. “Is this okay, then?” he whispered.

You laughed, and squirmed. You said, “Probably not,” but you also didn’t have it in you to stop him. You never really wanted Anakin to stop; not when he did things like kiss you, and tickle you with his breath.

“I don’t think I can help myself,” he confessed, as he raised his free hand; let his cool, leather-bound bionic fingers dance along your collarbone.

“Okay,” you ceded to him, “but you’re probably going to get my cold.”

He pulled back far enough that he could see your entire face; looked you right in the eye.

“A cold,” he said, “would be a small price to pay to thank you for what I know you just did for me.”

You smiled, but you shook your head at him. When you really thought about it, talking to Leia the way you had in the kitchen today was not altogether unlike touching Anakin’s leg had been ten years ago: It had come naturally to you because of the way he made you feel, and even though you hadn’t believed yourself to be especially kind for having done it, he still seemed to feel the need to offer you his thanks.

To accept his gratitude was a bit like getting to offer him a compliment, except without having to encounter a fervent objection.

You invited him up onto the couch with you, then, and allowed his expression of appreciation to make you forget about your stuffy nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Reader has a cold. It’s _just a bloody cold._ Couldn’t come up with a better way to have her at home while Ani’s at therapy, and anyway, it’s an opportunity for soup.
> 
> Every single one of my modern-setting stories is now officially a non-plague AU, though, so yeah.
> 
> One more thing: If you ever wanted to know what song I think of as ‘belonging’ to these guys (ha I know, shut tf up), it’s _Be My Yoko Ono_ by Barenaked Ladies.


	19. Remember *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s a bit long, and I am sorry for that.

“I should have known this was where we were going. Does anyone else even use this bench?”

“I don’t think so,” said Anakin.

It had been a brief-yet-winding walk from your car to where you found yourself now. Although it wasn’t all that far from the house, you hadn’t been to this particular spot in a very long time; not, in fact, since the last time Anakin had brought you here himself. Neither the bench, the slow-moving river from which it was set a few meters back, nor the foliage surrounding it seemed to have changed much in ten years’ time. (Not that you had been looking very carefully at the leaves the first time you’d come, of course.)

“It’s pretty well-hidden,” you observed, as you looked at the brush creeping up around the legs of the bench; stepped over the mid-length grass growing up on either side of it. You didn’t remember the process of getting here before, really— just arriving, sitting, talking until it was too cold outside for you to talk anymore, and retreating to Anakin’s car together when you knew you finally had to leave. Except for the weather, it had been very nice— and tonight, it wasn’t cold at all.

“That’s why I like it,” he told you. “...You know you didn’t have to come, though, right?”

“I wanted to.” You didn’t feel the need to add aloud that you’d have been interested in going just about anywhere with him.

“Thanks,” he said simply, and he stopped in front of the bench; looked out at the water. It was late enough in the evening that the surface seemed as if it were a single, unbroken swath of gleaming black. You could hear it trickling over the tiny rocks lining the river’s edge, along with the crickets hiding in the grass. Anakin took out a cigarette; twirled it about in the fingers of his left hand, but didn’t light it. Not without hesitation, he added, “...It’s easier to do things like this with you.”

“Things like what?” you asked, as you stepped up beside him; joined him in his observation of the landscape.

He laughed at himself as he answered, “Things like go outside.”

Again, you realized, you never could have given Anakin anything even approaching good therapy: Not only didn’t it bother you that he rarely left the house for much of anything except to attend his job; you also had barely noticed it. In spite of the progress he’d made over the years in other areas, in fact, he seemed even more reluctant to go out now than he had before. Even when you invited him along with you to do things other than go to work, he would nearly always send you off by yourself with a kiss, and a sincere (albeit predictable) apology.

To consider it now still didn’t frustrate or upset you— however, you knew that his tendency toward isolating himself in his basement stemmed more from fear and anger (or perhaps fear _of_ anger) than an authentic desire to remain underground in a small room by himself. 

You smiled, because he was the one who’d suggested coming to this spot; not you. “If it makes you happy to be here,” you told him, “then I’m happy to be here with you.”

“It always made me feel better to come here,” he said. He smiled, too; hesitated once more. As he continued to look at the water instead of at you, he added, “...until I couldn’t bring you with me anymore.”

“Didn’t you ever bring Padmé?” You had always assumed that she’d had the pleasure of joining him in doing things like this many, many more times than you.

Maybe you shouldn’t have asked quite so specifically, though: He shifted guiltily; took a long moment before answering, “...No. Before you, it was just for me— but after I had to stop seeing you, coming here only made me feel worse.”

You looked up from the river and over at him; began to apologize.

He quickly interrupted, “I didn’t mean that it was— _fuck._ ” He sighed and you noticed him tighten his grip on that still-unlit cigarette he was holding. He averted his gaze from the water; returned your stare. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was blaming you.” He seemed incredibly unsure of himself; enough that it struck you.

“What’s wrong, Ani?” you asked. 

“...I do that a lot,” he said— eventually. It sounded as though he felt like he was admitting to something.

“Do what?” You weren’t entirely sure that you understood.

“Make people feel like shit about things that aren’t their fault.” He looked back out at the river, then. 

You did, too; tried not to chuckle. “If you had _ever_ made me feel like that, it would have been a lot easier to stay away from you in the first place,” you reminded him. You happened to be on his left side, so you grabbed his hand. He let his cigarette fall to the ground as you did. “...And I definitely wouldn’t have come back after all this time.”

He squeezed your fingers. “I guess you’re right,” he ceded. “Just— I—” He cut himself off; tried again, “Will you tell me if I ever _do_ make you feel that way— especially for no reason?”

You paused; glanced up at him again quizzically. “Sure,” you told him. Then, with a hint of that little laugh you were still trying to suppress, “You’re not mentioning it now because it’s something you’re planning on doing, is it?”

He shot you a look. “No,” he said, clearly attempting to conceal a note of irritation. “But it’s something I know I used to do to Padmé— and I don’t want to fuck up with you like I fucked up with her. I don’t have the same kind of time to fix things now as I did before.” Somehow, his gaze both softened and intensified at once as he informed you decidedly, _”I have to get this right the first time.”_

You weren’t going to point out that this wasn’t precisely the ‘first time’, because for all intents and purposes, it may as well have been. Your relationship with Anakin was never going to end well ten years ago; this was, indeed, the first time the two of you could conceivably have been said to have a chance at really being together. You appreciated that he was motivated to keep from making mistakes he knew he’d made before.

You sat on the bench; tugged him down with you by the hand. He didn’t resist; landed deftly beside you. Without hesitation, he slid his arm around your shoulders; finally, you allowed your smile to come back to you. “You’re getting it right,” you assured him as you ventured to lean on him. 

He really was, too: He made you happy every day; you loved waking up with him in the morning, and falling asleep with your arms around him at night. He didn’t drink or break things anymore; always seemed more than willing to make himself available to you, no matter what type of companionship you needed. You couldn’t think of a single instance of him having withheld affection from you, and even when he wasn’t happy, you got the distinct impression that he was very conscious in his efforts to pull you in more closely, rather than push you farther away. 

“I love being with you,” you said, and you hoped he believed you. No one else in your entire life had ever made you feel quite so _necessary_ as Anakin, and you valued that.

He must have as well, because he thanked you again; much as he had for coming here with him in the first place. After that, “I love being with you too,” as he pushed absently at a rock on the ground with his foot. 

“What’s got you thinking about all this?” you asked, because as far as you knew, these were just the sorts of thoughts Anakin typically tried to push out of his mind at all costs— even if those costs happened to be very high.

“Padmé already forgave me— and anyway, she’s dead. I’m lucky enough that you gave me another chance, too, but Leia isn’t dead, _and_ she doesn’t trust me.” For once he didn’t say it as though he thought there was nothing he could do to change it, which was notable.

“I think she understands a bit more than she did before,” you told him. It had been more than a month since she’d stopped by to see about her washing machine; you’d certainly heard more from her since then than you’d become accustomed to hearing.

“She’s still— I don’t know— wary of me, I guess.”

“I would be too,” you said, maybe a bit too quickly— you felt him tense up at your words.

“She told you a bit about what it was like when she was growing up, then?”

You were sitting closely enough with him that you could turn your head upward and nestle your nose under his jaw, and so you did. “She told me enough for me to get a better idea of it than I had before,” you acknowledged. “But you know it’s not as if I didn’t see it first-hand, too.”

He swallowed at a lump that seemed to have formed in his throat. “I know,” he said. “Sometimes I forget just how often you were there, even when I wasn’t.”

“It’s okay.” You closed your eyes; breathed him in. You gave his neck a single, very gentle kiss. “You’re past it now— you know _that_ , too.”

“It’s proving it to Leia that’s hard,” he said, as he tightened his hold on you. “I never thought about having to do this back then.”

“Most people don’t think about things like that when they’re in pain,” you reminded him.

You felt him breathe in deeply; exhale very slowly. “She shouldn’t have had to know there was anything wrong with me at all.”

“Maybe not,” you conceded. “But you’re fixing it now, aren’t you?” 

“I’m trying to. It’s getting better.” 

“Then why do you think it’s weighing on you so much tonight?”

He straightened up a little bit; you felt a hint of one of his shrugs. “Trying to fix it is making me think about it. She talked to me for a while, the other week— really talked. It was nice, but I didn’t realize just how much I pissed her off every day when she was younger.”

“What did she say, exactly?” 

“That she always felt like it was her fault that I didn’t get along with her mom for so long; that she thought I hid away in the basement or at work drinking because I didn’t want to be around her.” He made a noise to indicate that he was frustrated with himself; straightened up some more. He retrieved his arm from around you and patted the front of his shirt as if to reassure himself that his cigarettes were still there; however, he didn’t take out the pack. “I paid more attention to Luke because he made it easier; he always seemed okay with the way I was, even when I wasn’t okay. She said— well, that she always felt abandoned by me. Let down.”

“You’re not going to let her down again,” you pointed out. You’d scarcely ever heard Anakin talk for this long about something that hurt him so deeply. As had frequently been the case (especially as of late), you were impressed by it. Maybe even a bit surprised, although you felt guilty for that— Ani doing the right thing never ought to have surprised you.

“No,” he confirmed. “I’m not.” 

You sat up a bit taller, too; looked up at his face again. “It sounds like you’re pretty determined to prove it to her.”

“As determined as I am to prove it to you,” he said, before looking away from your face. “That’s another thing she mentioned— that I deserted you, too.”

“We’ve already been over that,” you told him. “Besides, what would we have done if we’d stayed together back then?” You shook your head; put a hand on his leg. “You know that this had a one-in-a-million chance of working out just this way, don’t you? What does that tell you?”

“That I’m incredibly lucky for an old piece of shit,” he answered, and at least he was smiling when he said it.

You smiled back; just barely restrained yourself from swatting him. “ _I_ think it means that we needed to be together— you could have turned around and walked right out of my office the first time you saw me, but you didn’t.”

He came very close to laughing as he observed conversely, “You didn’t have to talk to me. You could have _kicked_ me out— I know that.”

“Well,” you said, “I didn’t.”

“And I didn’t leave.”

“ _And_ you showed up in the first place because you love Leia and wanted to show her that you care about her, right?”

He nodded.

“It’s also why you went back— isn’t it?”

“It’s a lot like it is with you— I feel like I have less time to fix things with her now than I did before,” he confessed.

His feeling was at least partially correct— in a few months, he was going to be somebody’s grandfather. It was surreal to imagine, really, especially to look at him; however, it was exactly what it was. You knew that Anakin would not want his daughter (or his grandchild) to struggle in any way because Leia thought he couldn’t be trusted to be asked for help. It occurred to you that, perhaps, she’d been testing the waters somewhat with her washing machine problem. You were happier than ever that he hadn’t disappointed her that day.

“That might be true,” you said. “But you’re doing it— you can see that, can’t you?”

With a smile you’d have described as shy if it had spread across anyone else’s face but his, “Yeah— I can.”

“So, you can also stop feeling bad about it.”

His expression turned to one of confusion. He was quiet for a few moments; then finally, “...Fuck.”

“Hm?”

“You’re right,” he said, but he sounded somewhat baffled.

“I know I’m right,” you agreed, with certainty.

He laughed, then, and turned his body to face you. “Thank you,” he smiled.

“You did it,” you told him. “Not me.”

“I’d never have come back if you’d kicked me out the first time— not to your office, or anyone else’s.”

“You don’t really know that.”

“I really do,” he insisted, and you knew that to argue with him would not be productive.

Instead, you finally noted aloud, “It’s a lot warmer this time than it was the first time you brought me here.”

“What?” he asked. Then, “...I guess it is.”

“The river’s calm tonight,” you observed next. “And it gets pretty deep toward the middle, doesn’t it?”

“It... does. Why? What are you getting at?”

“Can you swim, Anakin?”

“Can I—? Well, I _can,_ but—”

You stood up, and started by removing your shirt. “Come swimming with me, then,” you said through the fabric, as you pulled it over your head.

_”What are you doing?”_

“What does it look like I’m doing?” you asked, as you started to undo your pants.

“It looks like you’re going crazy,” he said, but he stood up after you anyway. 

“I’m not crazy,” you told him. “There’s no one here except us.” You stepped out of your pants and up closely to him; began to unbutton his shirt. You kissed at his chest as you revealed it; allowed your lips to linger on him as he shrugged the garment off of his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. His cigarettes and lighter produced a dull thump as they hit the dirt through his pocket. They might even have fallen out entirely— neither of you checked.

As he began to undo his belt with his left hand, you went to work detaching his prosthesis from his right. Carefully, you peeled back the edge of the leather sheath that held it to his bicep; loosened it gently and set it down on the bench once you’d eased it off of him. For good measure, you made sure to pick his shirt up from the ground, shake the dirt from off of it, and use it to cover up the hand in its entirety. You knew you were both about to get wet.

After he’d stepped out of his own pants and shorts, you rolled your panties down over your thighs, and he unclasped your bra with his hand in that unique, expert way you both loved so much.

“You’re still crazy,” he said, once you were both fully undressed. “But I’m glad to know that I wasn’t the only one who wished we could have done this the last time we came here.” He placed his arm around your waist and pulled you in very near to him; kissed you as you returned his embrace. You ran one hand down his back as the other very gently stroked the part of his right arm which was typically bound by leather— you knew that it sometimes became irritated, with how very much he disliked having fewer than two hands.

“I love you,” you offered, once you’d broken your kiss.

“I love _you_ ,” he answered, and together you turned to head for the water. You spent a long time (although it didn’t feel like all that long, really; it could never have felt as long as you’d have liked it to) grasping at and chasing each other beneath the surface. The river was as calm and warm as it had looked upon first glance, and as it turned out, swimming was among the myriad things Anakin seemed to be able to do quite skillfully in spite of his missing piece.

When you were finished in in the water, you climbed back up onto the shore; bypassed a row of rocks at the edge so that you could fall together into one of the soft, grassy patches surrounding the bench. He lay on his back and let you sit atop him; you stifled a shout at the immaculately familiar stretch you registered as you raised yourself up, and then proceeded to push down as hard as you could. You were on the ground; not a mattress— you felt every bit of the impact, and you relished it. It was very easy to tell just how badly he wanted this; he seemed to need it exactly as much as you.

As if to confirm your thought, he breathed your name gratefully while you started to roll your hips; you leaned down to kiss him, too, because you could never, ever get enough of kissing Ani. He raked his nails along your back as you moved, which was somewhat unlike him— but, you weren’t about to complain. Part of you hadn’t even expected him to be willing to join you in the water; most of you wouldn’t have anticipated his bringing you here again to begin with.

Your hands were on his chest between your bodies; you curled your fingers into him in return for his having clawed at you. Anakin broke your kiss after a while in favour of shouting out as you came down on him in what must have been just the perfect way— it made him quiver; seemed to cause him to lose himself entirely in being buried inside of you. You loved when he gave himself to you like this, of course; loved it so much that it made you yell, too... and this time, you did not try to restrain your noise.

You took your time slowing down, and so did he; you continued to kiss one another deeply and press yourself into his chest as you kept on bucking into him, until it was finally clear that you’d both been completely fulfilled. You collapsed on top of him, and suddenly there were goosebumps on your back; the air felt much cooler, now, in contrast with the fresh warmth of your skin.

Once he’d caught his breath, he laughed at you, “I can’t believe you just did that!”

You grinned into his neck as you informed him, “It wasn’t only me.” Then, you sat back up just so that you could look at him. He was wet and warm, and his hair was spread out behind him elegantly on the grass. His smile was perfect, and so were his eyes— they’d always been absolutely brimming with love, but you could tell that he’d never had the luxury of giving you quite this much of himself. He appeared to feel it as acutely as you did.

“Marry me,” he said, seemingly out of nowhere.

 _”What?”_ you asked. You were sure you hadn’t heard him correctly.

“Marry me,” he repeated, and you knew then that you hadn’t misheard. He continued, “You’re perfect— you’re absolutely fucking _perfect_ , and I need to be your husband.”

“I— are you serious, Anakin?” Perhaps you’d gotten him a bit too worked-up. Of course you wanted to marry him; however, you certainly hadn’t thought that he was anywhere close to being ready to do that again. You’d been more than willing to be patient; when it came to Ani, your well of understanding was virtually endless. You felt he’d earned it.

“I’m as serious about this as I’ve ever been about anything. _Marry me._ I need the entire world— _our_ entire world, and everyone in it— to know that I won’t ever let you go.”

That’s what marriage was really for, wasn’t it? You certainly didn’t intend on letting Anakin go, either; that hadn’t changed. You were quite sure, now, that it was never going to. 

“Alright, then,” you said, because you could have pondered it for a million years and not been able to come up with a good enough reason to say ‘no’. “Let’s get married.”

Anakin appeared to bite his lip, and for a moment you thought he was going to cry. He didn’t, though; instead, he thanked you. He loved to thank you, even when you insisted that he didn’t have to. “You have no idea how much this means to me,” he told you, and you couldn’t help but shake your head.

“I know exactly how much it means to you,” you said in return, and you did: You knew very well how much Anakin loved being part of a family. You liked the notion of it, too, but if you hadn’t found him again, part of you strongly suspected that you’d never have been able to get to this point with any other person.

He only kissed you (and kept on kissing you) until, much like the last time, you both grew cold enough to decide to go back to the car. You dressed lazily; you carried your bra and panties under your arm, and— sans shirt— he toted his carefully-wrapped bionic hand beneath his. Since he wasn’t entirely put-together, you were the one to drive.

You each kept glancing at one another and grinning as you did; you were sure you looked ridiculous, but you really didn’t care about that. All you could think about was how much better this trip home was than the last one you’d taken from Anakin’s favourite spot— and about how you were more excited to experience your future with him than you had ever been before.

You would never, ever let yourself forget that there had been a significant period of time in your life during which you truly thought you’d never see him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alllllll our times have _come_  
>  heeeerreee but now they're _gone_  
>  seasons don't fear the reaper  
> nor do the wind, the sun or the rain _(we can be like they are)_  
>  come on baby, don't fear the reaper  
> baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper  
> we’ll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper  
> baby I'm your maaaaannnn
> 
> 🎶
> 
> (I’m so sorry if you hated that, but I’m probably never ever going to write another story where I get to have him do this, and I just... idk, I need it.)


	20. Present

You were glad that you and Anakin had the house to yourselves, because when you walked into it after driving home from that spot by the river he liked so much, you were still quite damp... and probably noisier than you realized, too. You went to the kitchen together first, where you placed the jumble of clothes you’d been toting (along with Anakin’s right arm) onto the table. He was still shirtless; his hair was wet, messy, and perfect.

“Fuck,” he said as he turned to gaze at you. He was grinning; you couldn’t help but return his expression as you looked him over.

“What?” you asked, because you wanted him to tell you what he was thinking. He glanced away for a moment; down at the floor. Anakin had hardly ever seemed shy to you, but that was almost the way he was coming off right now. Although somewhat unlike him, it was was endearing.

He looked you in the eye again as he answered you tentatively with his own question, “...You meant what you said, didn’t you? You really want to do this with me?”

You almost laughed, but managed to restrain yourself. You knew he was entirely serious about what he’d asked, even if it seemed absurd to you that he would doubt the genuineness of your promise to marry him. “Of course I do, Ani,” you told him. You paused before adding to that, “...I wouldn’t have figured you were ready to even _think_ about getting married again, though, if you want me to be honest with you.” Again, you would’ve been fine with however long he might have wanted to wait. Your relationship with him had never been what anyone else would have called ‘normal’; you had no desire— no need— to try to force it into a box in which it might not have fit.

He _did_ laugh, as he turned his attention to a slip of paper he’d fixed to the refrigerator with a magnet. You already knew what it was, and what it was made you smile— it just so happened to be an ultrasound photo his daughter had given him; a picture of his grandchild. As he looked at it, he informed you, “I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as conscious as I have been lately about just how fucking _fast_ time goes by. Do you understand what I’m getting at?” He looked back at you once more; still seemed somewhat more reserved than he normally might have. You were used to seeing him experience anxiety, but right now he was exuding a different kind of nervousness than he usually did.

You stepped up a bit more closely to him, so that you were side-by-side in front of the fridge. “I think I do,” you said, and took a look at the picture, yourself. You thought back to what you’d told him months ago, when you’d first reconnected— that you didn’t want him to feel as if he were in a rush, or do things before he was ready to do them. It occurred to you that what you had initially perceived as him hurrying had, in fact, been more an expression of the strength of his own feelings than anything else. He’d told you that then, but you hadn’t quite believed him. 

A bit like Leia, you supposed you ought to have given him a bit more credit than that. It was very difficult not to tell him he’d made you feel proud of him. You’d always been able to see through Anakin’s various facades; however, you never could have fully understood the person he was without witnessing it for yourself. You were more grateful than ever to know him in the absence of both his drinking, and the worst of his temper. You’d already reflected, together, on just how lucky he was to get so many second-chances... but, having him like this made you feel lucky, too. 

“Is it a boy or a girl?” you asked of Leia’s baby, because Ani had been quiet for a little while, and nobody had told you yet.

He shrugged, “I have no idea— I don’t think she wants to know.” Then he smiled, “Not until it’s born, anyway.”

“She doesn’t seem like the sort of person who appreciates surprises,” you observed. She was like her dad that way, you thought. You’d have figured she’d want to know every last thing about what was happening to her right now.

“It’s more that she doesn’t think it makes a difference,” said Anakin. “And she’s kind of right, isn’t she?”

You realized, then, that she _was_ right. Leia always had been very smart— it made you smile, too. “She is,” you confirmed. After standing in familiar, comfortable silence for an indiscernible amount of time, you looked up at Anakin and said, “I think I’m going to go upstairs and wash the river out of my hair. You want to come, too?”

He seemed a bit jarred; almost as if he’d come out of a trance. “Hm? Yeah— yeah, I do.” He shifted on his feet; said, “I have to run downstairs for a minute first, though... okay?”

“Okay. What do you need?”

“I just remembered that I left something out— I’ll meet you upstairs.”

You looked at him quizzically, and then started to make your way up the staircase. It had been a pleasure to swim in the river with Ani, but you didn’t especially like the way it made your hair smell. That was fine; he was as nice to shower with as he was to go swimming with, as you were now well aware.

Your only thought right now was that you hoped he would not take too long to join you.

...

You were letting the water soak your hair when you heard the glass door to the shower slide open. You didn’t turn around, because you knew who it was— and when he stepped in, he did exactly as you’d have expected him to: He walked up behind you, and started to kiss at the base of your neck. You pressed your back into him, assuming that you would soon feel his arm wrap itself around you, as it typically did when you shared this particular space together.

Instead, though, he finished kissing you and proceeded to whisper directly into your ear, “Turn around.”

You did. “What is it?” you asked curiously. He’d been acting strange since you had first walked into the house.

“It’s this,” he said, and he held something up to you in his hand. You stepped out of the way of the stream to better examine it; found to your complete surprise that it was a ring— where had he gotten a ring?

You cleared the water out of your eyes, and looked between Anakin’s face and the piece of jewellery he was currently— unexpectedly— presenting to you. You weren’t quite sure why he’d elected to give it to you in the shower, but maybe it made him less nervous to do it this way. Maybe he simply couldn’t wait.

“Where did you get this, Ani?” You’d assumed his proposal to you had been completely improvised, but this seemed to tell you differently. You examined the ring itself; took it from his hand so that you could turn it over in your own. The hot water running behind you felt very far-away at that moment (although you were graciously enveloped by steam); what Anakin was offering you right now was— to put it plainly— nearly as lovely as he was himself... and to say that was to say a lot.

The band was thin, intricate, and appeared to be made of highly-polished silver; the stone set inside of it was perfectly smooth, and also happened to be the most brilliant shade of green you’d ever seen. It was large enough to make its own beauty evident, but not enough to be ostentatious. 

You almost couldn’t picture him buying it... which made sense to you when he answered your question as to its origins very earnestly with, “I made it.”

“You _made_ it?” You didn’t mean to look as surprised as you likely did.

He nodded. “I know it’s not all that nice,” he began, “and if you want, I’ll get you a real one soon, but—”

“What are you talking about?” you interrupted. _”It’s perfect.”_ After that, you gave it back to him and put out your hand so that he could slip it onto your finger himself. He did, and you were impressed to find that even its size was correct. Once you were wearing it, you slid your arms around his waist and pulled him beneath the still-flowing water with you. “I had no idea you could do that,” you told him, as you held him tightly and kissed his chest.

You felt him laugh; he admitted, “I didn’t know I could either— but, it’s really not all that different from what I do at work.” You supposed he was right. If he could make a whole hand, then why not a ring to go on one, too? He put his arm around you in return, and pressed his fingertips into your back. “I’ve had that chunk of emerald for about thirty years, and I had no idea what to do with it.” As he rested his chin contentedly on the top of your head (you’d always loved that), he added, “Not until I found you again, anyway.”

You couldn’t help but smile widely at that. Without letting go of him, you asked, “Where did it come from?” Not many people tended to leave precious jewels laying around for that long without either selling them or putting them to use; what had Anakin been waiting for?

He paused briefly before telling you, “I got it in Afghanistan— most emeralds they try to sell you there are fake, but that one’s not.”

“How do you know?” you asked— because you were curious; not because you didn’t believe him.

“Because I didn’t buy it,” he said matter-of-factly. 

“Then where...?”

“It was a gift from somebody who wasn’t about to lie to me,” he chuckled.

You pulled back to give him a curious look, because you had no idea what he was talking about. He didn’t speak very often (or in much detail) about his time overseas... except, of course, for when he was making you eggs. You wondered about the circumstances under which he’d obtained the material he had used to make your engagement ring, but you were also just fine with waiting until you’d exited the shower to find out.

Anakin had already begun to kiss you, and there were few things you loved more than kissing the man who would soon be your husband amongst a cloud of hot, fragrant steam.

...

“Her dad worked in the mines when she was younger,” he said. “She’d been hanging onto it her whole life before she gave it to me. I told her to keep it, but that seemed to piss her off. I’m glad she insisted, now.”

“She gave it to you because you didn’t kill her kids?” 

You were laying in bed with Anakin after your shower together; it was late, and you were tired— but, as was often the case, you weren’t ready to stop talking to him. You were fortunate enough to be holding him in your arms right now; he was resting his head on your chest because, as you’d learned, he liked to listen to the sound of your heart as much as you liked listening to his.

“Trust me,” he said, _“not_ killing guys was a pretty big deal over there back then.” He laughed softly, “I actually got into a ton of shit for making that judgement call.”

“Were you _supposed_ to kill them?”

“No, it turned out that I was right— they weren’t the targets.”

“So why did you get in trouble?”

“Because I wasn’t supposed to be taking those kinds of chances; it wasn’t my job. Looking back on it, I _was_ pretty fucking stupid. I could’ve gotten half my unit killed if I’d been wrong. I’m glad I did what I did, though— or, _didn’t_ do.”

You thought about what it might be like to make a choice like that; found it difficult to imagine. You didn’t like the idea of being the deciding factor in whether another person lived or died; realized, then, that Anakin probably hadn’t much cared for it, either. You thought about that old uniform of his; the fancy one. No wonder he didn’t like to wear it.

“I’m glad you did the right thing, too,” you told him, and you held the ring up on your finger to get a better look at it. It was hard to wrap your mind around just where it had come from, now that you knew. You thought about the ultrasound picture on the fridge, and then about the woman who had given Ani the emerald; how grateful to him she must have been. “How did you know, though?”

“Know what?” He stroked the skin on your arm gently with his fingers.

“Know not to kill them— that they weren’t the people you were looking for.”

You felt him shrug. “I just knew,” he said. “I thought I knew a lot of stuff back then... just about everything, really. I know _now_ that I didn’t actually understand much of anything at all, but I was at least right about that woman’s sons.” More quietly, he observed, “That’s why I thought it suited you— the emerald, I mean.”

“What?” It was nice of him to say that, but you didn’t quite understand.

He looked up at you with a tired smile and explained, “Being with you seemed like a mistake, at first... and it was something I definitely got into huge trouble for doing. It also ended up being something I’m grateful I _did_ do, for lots of different reasons.” He closed his eyes and put his ear back to your chest. “Just like that little stone, you’re a rarity— hard to get. _But,_ everything I went through to be with you ended up being worth it. That’s why it’s perfect for you.”

You hadn’t felt your face flush in response to anything Anakin had said to you for a while; however, you registered a distinct heat enveloping you at those particular words. For somebody who had spent a good portion of his life being deeply in love with two people at once, he certainly had a way of making you feel incredibly special.

You always hesitated a bit before asking him about the relationship he’d had with his wife (his _first_ wife), but as the months had passed, he’d seemed to become more willing to share some of its details with you. You appreciated that, and right now you were curious enough that you felt it was worth it to ask, “Did you ever think to make something for Padmé out of it?”

He kissed your chest (not entirely unlike the way you might have kissed his), and peered up toward your face again. “No,” he told you, and although he sounded quite decisive, he didn’t seem upset. “Like I said— it suits _you_.” He closed his eyes one final time as he rested his head on your chest once more; finished in barely a murmur, _“Only_ you.”

At one point, you might have believed he were only saying that out of kindness, or a sense of obligation. However, having had the opportunity to see him— _really_ see him— you knew, now, that he was telling you the truth.

Anakin may very well have been the most honest person you had ever met.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t think I’ve continued this narrative directly from its own previous chapter in a little while, so that was weirdly satisfying for me. 
> 
> Full disclosure: I _am_ going to be palpably depressed when this story ends, because I’m always depressed when one of these ends... and this one in particular happens to mean a lot to me. That’s probably making it a bit harder to finish (it’s also part of why I have so many stories going at once), and I’m sorry for that!
> 
> I’m really excited for the next chapter, though, because I’ve wanted to write ‘this’ Anakin as being more functional/less selfish since ‘The Babysitter’ ended, and he’s finally getting back to where he was always meant to be. Anakin is a disastrous mess of a human, but he is also a wonderful man, and I love to see him prove it.
> 
> Thank you for still being here.


	21. Perfect

“I fucking hate parties.”

“I don’t like them very much, either— you know we don’t _really_ have to have one, right?”

“I figured a big party is what _you’d_ want,” said Anakin, through a long, smoky exhale. You were sitting together in the basement, on his big, green trunk. It was still positioned directly beneath the little window out of which he always used to blow his smoke when his kids were young. You couldn’t help noticing he’d been doing a lot less of that recently (you hadn’t mentioned it, of course), but you also knew that this type of planning caused him stress.

You glanced around the room as you leaned against his shoulder and thought to yourself. Finally you asked, “What did you do the first time?” For some reason, you imagined that his wedding to Padmé would have been big... and fancy, too.

“Huh? Oh— not very much,” he admitted with a laugh. When you looked up at him curiously, he expanded on his answer, “We were in kind of a rush, and nobody wanted us to do it anyway. There wasn’t really anything to it, but... I don’t know.” He trailed off; shrugged. “It was nice.”

That made you smile, because it wasn’t as if you couldn’t relate. You weren’t especially close with your own family after being out from under their roof for a number of years; however, you did still talk to your brother with some frequency. He knew you’d reconnected with Anakin, and seemed to think it was both hilarious and inadvisable at the same time. Your mother was ambivalent, and your father was downright offended— likely due to the fact that your soon-to-be husband was closer to his age than to your own. That was fine; frankly, you understood... and it still wasn’t going to change your mind.

“It can be small, then,” you said, and Anakin looked relieved. 

He moved to stub out his cigarette in the little ashtray he kept downstairs. “I never thought I’d end up doing this again,” he observed through a small smile of his own. 

“I never thought I’d end up doing this at all,” you told him. It was true: You’d had other relationships during your time apart from Ani, but none of them had been as emotionally intimate as the one you shared with him— especially now. He’d never been all that difficult to get close to; not for you, anyway. It was hard to imagine being with anyone else quite like this.

A hint of insecurity came through in his voice as he reminded you, “...You don’t _have_ to marry me, you know. I’d want to be with you whether you wanted to—”

“Stop,” you said gently. It had been several weeks since your trip to the river; between then and now, Anakin had given you innumerable opportunities to back out of your engagement. “What I mean is that I couldn’t imagine doing this with anybody except for _you.”_

He laughed at you, and got up from the trunk. He paced across the room to set his ashtray down on his desk, and then turned back to look at you. “You’re fucking crazy, then,” he said, even though he was now grinning widely. As he walked back over to where you were sitting, he added to his evaluation of your mental soundness, “Not that I’m complaining.”

It was your turn to laugh as you rose from the trunk, too. You linked your arms around his waist, and looked up. “If I’m crazy, then so are you,” you said. You thought carefully for a moment before venturing with some coyness (and a measure of bravery), _”Most_ fifty-year-old widowers don’t end up marrying their kids’ old babysitters.”

You were a bit surprised to see his face go red, although his expression didn’t change. With a chuckle he countered, “Most fifty-year-old widowers don’t love their kids’ old babysitters the way I love you.”

That turned your smile into a grin, too. “I like being crazy with you, Ani,” you told him.

“I like being crazy with you too,” he said; followed by, “I always, _always_ have.”

That made you feel happy enough to hear that you couldn’t help but squeeze him tightly, and crane your neck upward to retrieve a kiss. You really didn’t care _how_ you married Anakin— all that mattered to you was that you were going to do it. 

It really could never have been anybody else.

...

_”Dad? I need your help.”_

You pulled your eyes open to the sound of Leia’s voice coming through Anakin’s phone. You’d both been asleep in bed; he’d clearly woken up before you to the sound of his ringtone.

“It’s the middle of the night,” you heard him say sleepily. “If this is about the washer—” 

_”It’s not that! It’s the baby!”_

“What?” He started to sound a bit more awake, then. “What do you mean?”

_”I mean I think it’s on its way!”_

Your vision had focused by that point; as you sat up yourself, you saw his eyes widen. “It can’t be,” he said. “You still have another—”

_”I know! That’s why I need you— you have to drive me to the hospital!”_

Anakin had stood up by that point; told Leia, “I’m already on my way, but I have to put my phone down to get ready.” After a very brief pause, he asked her, “Where’s what’s-his-name?”

 _”He’s working; even if I called him right now, it’d take him days to get here. I’m by myself— please hurry!”_ You’d been informed, by this point, that Leia’s boyfriend happened to be a truck driver. He transported cargo all over the country, and while he usually made decent money, his occupation frequently took him far from home. Apparently, he enjoyed being on-the-road just enough to cause Anakin to resent him. 

“I’ll see you soon, then.” He set his phone down and started to get dressed. 

“Did I hear that right?” you asked, while he hastily-yet-skillfully applied his forearm to his bicep.

“You heard right,” he assured you.

“Do you want me to—”

“No. No, you stay here.” He’d already stepped into a pair of pants by this point, and was in the process of pulling the nearest shirt on over his head as he continued, “I’m hoping this is nothing. Sometimes it seems like they’re coming, even when they’re really not.” He paused; appeared, momentarily, to have gone somewhere a bit farther away from the present than either of you were used to. “...At least,” he finally said, “that’s what Leia’s mom told me.”

You recalled something he’d said to you a decade ago: That Padmé’s pregnancy with the twins had been some of his happiest time together with her... prior, anyway, to his having woken up to her touch, and mistaking her for somebody trying to kill him. He’d hurt her, then; hurt her badly enough that the twins had come early, and she’d had to be hospitalized.

“You’re sure?” you asked him, worried that— maybe— memories of what had happened twenty years ago would make it more difficult for him to help Leia now. Anakin tended to carry things with him; sometimes for a very long while.

He assuaged your fear effectively as he stuck his phone into his pocket, came around to your side of the bed, and leaned down to kiss you. “I’ll be fine— we’ll _all_ be fine,” he said, and he sounded quite sure of himself. You realized that he likely saw this opportunity to assist his daughter as a way to prove to her that he could, in fact, be useful and reliable beyond his ability to repair broken machines. You knew he still worried about whether or not she really thought he could be trusted— of course he wasn’t about to share or otherwise eschew this chance to show her who he could actually be.

He was on his way out the bedroom door by the time you’d finished that consideration. You told him that you loved him; in return, he smiled and told you to go back to sleep, because he knew you had to work in the morning. You did lie back down, then; listened to him descend the stairs, exit the house, and start up his car. As it pulled away, you rolled over onto his side of the mattress, and pressed your body into the warmth still lingering there. It now felt like a very long time, you realized, since you’d last gone to sleep without Anakin beside you.

You were still tired, but you didn’t fall back asleep right away. Instead, you held your hand up so that you could look at your ring— the ring he’d made specifically for you out of an emerald he’d had since he was barely out of his teens. You appreciated it more than you could express to him; if he thought it suited you, then you thought it suited him right back. Everything about how he’d obtained it and about how he’d given it to you was perfectly emblematic of who he was: Thoughtful, perceptive, and loving to a fault.

The way Anakin cared for people, you understood, was both unique and incredibly intense; you also knew that it had caused him immeasurable pain throughout the course of his life to be the way he was. A lesser person, you mused, might have tried to shut themselves down by the time they’d reached the age he was right now; attempted to turn off the feelings which had caused them so much inconvenience and discomfort. You thought about the courage he had displayed by staying to talk with you in the first place on the day he’d unknowingly walked into your office, and how he had continued to show you his inner strength as you’d worked together to renew your connection.

You grabbed your phone, then; it had been sitting on the little table next to the bed along with Anakin’s, before he’d risen to leave. Making sure it was turned up so that you would hear it if it went off, you put it beside the pillow. You were indescribably proud of Ani for being available to his daughter in a way you knew she hadn’t expected. He’d waited a long time to start to make things up to her, and you were aware that the longer a person took to do something like that, the more difficult it tended to be.

Ani had toted a gun around a hostile foreign country, lived through an explosion that should have killed him, adapted seamlessly to being without a part of his body most people took for granted, and had loved both you and his wife simultaneously (and for a very long time) in a way nearly no one else could have conceived. Now he was doing something you knew was both arduous and frightening for the benefit of somebody he once thought would never be able to trust him.

When you’d had to part ways with him years before, you remembered reflecting on Anakin’s bravery. You’d spent time angry with him over the years, of course; had felt both sad and abandoned in turns. You hadn’t always appreciated the decision he’d made, necessarily, but you did understand it... and you had also never stopped loving him.

The reason for that, you were now certain, was that you’d _always_ been able to see him for who he really was... no matter how hard he had worked to try to hide it. You were infinitely proud of him for gathering the best of himself; gathering it well enough to show his kids... and you, and anyone else who might have cause to see him, too.

Anakin had always been very easy to love.

...

_I was wrong,_ said his text message to you. It came at close to noon the next day; you were already at work, but you were alone in your office right at that moment. _It’s a boy._

 _The baby came?_ you sent back. You felt a bit concerned; from what you knew, that would make him almost a full two months early. 

_He did. A bit too soon, but he’s perfect._

You smiled, because you were relieved. _How’s Leia?_ you asked.

 _Fine, but they had to cut her open to get him out._ That made you wince. _She’s still recovering,_ said the next message, _so I’m going to stay here with Ben until she’s feeling better._

You were both surprised and thrilled to learn the name that Leia had chosen for her new son, because you knew exactly why she’d decided to use it. _She named him after your old commander?_

The man who had trained Anakin when he’d first entered the military had meant a lot to him. Ben Kenobi was long since dead— he’d died in Afghanistan, along with more than two thousand more soldiers just like him— but you knew that Ani still thought about him frequently. Leia had, unfortunately, not been alive to meet him; that’s why it was clear to you that she’d selected the name to honour her own father. You wished more than anything that you could have seen the look on his face when she’d told him.

 _She did,_ he confirmed. _I hope it suits him._

 _I’m sure it will,_ you typed out, and there was no doubt in your mind that it would. After that, you asked, _Do you know when you’ll be coming home?_ You wanted to be there to greet him, if you could.

 _I don’t know yet. Whenever Leia starts to feel a bit better,_ he answered, and you were fine with that— you did not have any kids of your own; had never given birth before— you hadn’t, of course, ever undergone a cesarean section. As far as you were concerned, she could take all the time she needed to get back on her feet. More than ‘fine’, in fact, you were incredibly proud of Anakin for the sheer strength he was putting on display as he supported his family right now... and you knew for certain that you would be unable to restrain yourself from telling him exactly that the next time you saw him.

Even if he didn’t like it, you hoped that he would understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I was writing this, I realized how often I depict these two just falling asleep together. Which is funny, because they don’t actually do that in this chapter. Also, I really am sorry that I killed Obi, but the first story wouldn’t have happened in the first place if he’d still been alive, & trust me when I say it’s entirely necessary for the other soldier-Ani-AU story I’ve got going.
> 
> I’m also _very_ sorry that I took so long with this. I’ve never even attempted to steer a story toward a happy ending before. Like, shouldn’t they _all_ just lose their limbs and fall into a volcano? :| 
> 
> (No, I promise that won’t happen.)
> 
> I really can’t thank you enough if you’re still here & are reading this.


	22. Success

“When Leia was little,” whispered Anakin, “she always used to want to pick ‘flowers’— even the ones that were just weeds.”

“That’s sweet,” you said, in an equally measured voice. “Did you let her take them home?”

“Of course I did.” As he stifled a laugh, “She’d keep them in mugs until they rotted.”

“It was nice of you to let her,” you smiled. “My dad always used to throw that stuff away before I ever had a chance to take it inside.” 

Since first meeting him, you’d known Anakin to be a distinctly different type of parent than either of your own happened to be. He’d made plenty of mistakes, of course, but you also knew that he’d always been concerned with his children’s happiness; that they were always, _always_ on his mind. For Ani, the prospect of losing them in any capacity was simply too much to bear; that had been true for as long as they’d been alive. Letting Leia keep her flowers, you thought, was an indication of not only how much he loved her, but of the way he perceived his duty as a father to her, too. You couldn’t help but appreciate his philosophy.

Right now, the two of you were on the couch in the living room together... briefly, though, your mind transported you back in time to that old, smoky hotel room; the one to which he’d once been banished after your poorly-timed initial connection with him had been uncovered. You’d visited him there almost every day (and every night, too); looking back, you realized you had spent more time there with him than any reasonable person would have thought was wise. You hadn’t been reasonable back then, though; neither of you had been. 

Being in love— as far as you were aware— had _never_ made anyone act reasonably... or wisely, for that matter.

“That makes me feel a bit better to know,” said Anakin, of your dad’s old tendency to (somewhat insensitively) dispose of things you’d found outdoors.

“Hm? Why?” you asked.

“...I always thought it seemed like he was being too hard on you, before,” he said tentatively. Then, he smiled. “Not that it matters much now.”

You were the one to repress a laugh this time. “‘Too hard on me’? You were twice my age and married, never mind everything else.” Part of you had come to understand, over time, the perspective your father had adopted when the nature of your relationship with Anakin had first been revealed to him. He’d been angry; extremely so... and had threatened to entirely withdraw every conceivable type of support from you if he even so much as suspected you were still seeing him.

Anakin caught your eye with his. As he held your gaze, he asked, “How often do you talk to your dad these days?” He already knew that the answer to his question was ‘not very often at all’.

“You have a point,” you said, and you supposed he did. You were aware that there was more than one method, as a parent, of rendering yourself inaccessible to your own kids. Your father had done it one way; Anakin had done it somewhat differently... but only Ani, you reflected, had an especially functional relationship with either of his children now that they were grown. Aside from that, it was obvious just how much he was putting into earning Leia’s trust after foisting on her what even you couldn’t deny sounded like a less-than-stellar childhood. You loved your dad, but somehow couldn’t imagine him ever doing the same.

Just then, the most recent evidence of Anakin’s effort began to shift about— his new grandson had been asleep in his arms for the past couple of hours, hence your whispering. The elder of the two had barely moved for the duration of little Ben’s nap. 

“Hey,” Anakin greeted him gently. “Your mom’s going to be here soon— you have great timing, don’t you?” He shifted the baby currently nestled into the crook of his left arm; used the cybernetic index finger of his right to tickle an impossibly tiny hand. 

Since you had been leaning against him, you sat up a bit, now; looked down in the direction of Ben. After watching him blink his eyes open (they were just like Leia’s; dark and wide), you glanced back up at Anakin. “He really seems to be taking to you,” you observed. 

Leia’s son was barely three months old, but she was already back at work. You’d been shocked to hear from Anakin that it was what she wanted; you had been prepared, in fact, to be angry with her employer because you thought that they were being unfair. As it turned out, she had gone back because she’d felt compelled toward doing so; not because she was obligated. That surprised you quite a bit, but Anakin had told you that it wasn’t entirely unexpected— just another way in which she happened to take after her mom. You figured that really did make sense, given what you’d known of Padmé.

“He’s just used to me,” said Anakin, as he smiled down at the baby. Ben had been here a lot lately, because his own dad— Leia’s boyfriend, whose name you’d learned was Han— had ended up having to leave again not long after meeting his new son. It seemed that he had to complete yet another a run with his truck that had been scheduled months ago: No one could have known that Ben would come early. Although Anakin had acted fairly upset about it, you could tell that he truly didn’t mind looking after his grandchild; in fact, he appeared to be very much enjoying the experience.

“It’s more than that,” you told him, “and you know it,” to which he only smiled and shook his head. 

He should have known it, you thought— It was obvious, even from the most cursory glance at the two of them, that Ben was already deeply attached to his grandfather. It made perfect sense to you; the two of them had bonded at the hospital together only minutes after his introduction to the world, due to Leia’s having had to undergo emergency surgery to give birth. With Han away working and Padmé dead, Anakin had been the one to take on what would typically have been their responsibilities under those circumstances. He’d been the first one to hold the baby, the first to feed him, and the first one to change him and put him to sleep, too.

Now that everyone was safely back at home, he was still doing those things; doing them with much more frequency and enthusiasm than you’d ever have anticipated.

“You know,” you started carefully, “I sort of thought you’d have a tougher time with this than you seem to be having.” You’d have figured that his time with his own kids when they were the same age as Ben would have coloured his view of what it meant to care for an infant. You were usually at work yourself for the bulk of the time he spent babysitting, and while you didn’t mind infants, you also didn’t know much about what to do with them. His own experience was twenty years old by this point; however, it all still seemed to come fairly naturally to him.

“This is different from the first time,” he said, and you were grateful for not having to explain just what you meant. He went on, “The guilt was the worst part of having the twins by themselves. I don’t feel that way; not now. Plus,” he chuckled, “there’s only one of him.” He sat up straighter as Ben started to become more alert; deftly adjusted him so that he could look around the room. Anakin seemed like he wanted to say something more, but that he also wasn’t entirely sure about doing so. After a pause, he appeared to decide that it was safe for him to observe, “...Besides all that, I’m not alone this time, am I?”

He may as well have been— you were experienced and comfortable looking after older kids, but again, infants tended to baffle you a bit. You understood what he was saying, but when Ben was here, Anakin did just about all of the work of taking care of him by himself. More often than not, you simply watched; admired the sight of it— it was a pleasure to see him this way. You never thought you’d get a glimpse at this particular side of Anakin, but now that you had, you were discovering just how beautiful it really was.

“No,” you assured him. “You’re not alone.”

Before he could say anything back to you, a set of headlights illuminated the living room through the window... and you couldn’t stop yourself from noting that it felt wonderful not to have a sudden urge to jump up, or separate yourselves from one another. The days of hiding how you felt about Ani were long since over.

It was just beginning to get dark outside; Leia had let you know that she’d be late getting off work, but also that she was excited to come and pick up her son for the evening. She might not have been the type to stay cooped up at home with him all day and night, but it was clear that she was very proud of Ben. If anyone loved him more than Anakin seemed to, it was most definitely her.

“See?” he said to the baby, who had started to coo and gurgle. “There she is.” As he stood up very carefully, he reiterated with a smile, “I told you your timing was just right.” He walked over to the foyer, where the knob on the front door had just begun to turn.

Leia walked in, then; it seemed she couldn’t help but grin widely at the sight of her son. “Hi, Ben,” she said first, before looking up at Anakin and greeting him, too. After he passed the baby off to her with his one good arm, you noticed her give him a look.

“What?” he asked, because he had noticed it, too.

“It’s nothing,” said Leia, as she took the little one into her arms and kissed his head. Anakin tilted his own head at her, clearly still curious about what she might have to say. A moment or two passed, then she admitted, “...I don’t know how you manage taking care of him all day with one hand when I sometimes feel like I can barely do it with two.”

You’d had the same thought, the first time Ani had walked in the door toting Ben in his car seat— but, Anakin had made it clear to you very quickly that he wasn’t going to have any problems. Between his impossibly-strong left arm, the gentle-yet-precise grip of the replacement he’d fashioned for his right, and an uncanny ability to hold just about any object imaginable between his front teeth, he was perfectly adept when it came to baby-care. It shouldn’t have surprised you, but it did— maybe it was just that Anakin was inherently impressive.

“I took care of you _and_ Luke like this when you were Ben’s age,” he reminded Leia. He exuded a confidence you loved seeing from him, but that you also weren’t completely used to yet.

Leia laughed (it seemed as though she were laughing at herself, much like Anakin did sometimes), and answered simply, “I guess you’re right.” Then, she looked up from her son and at her dad instead. From where you were sitting, it seemed as if she almost couldn’t quite believe who she was staring at. To her, you realized, seeing him like this must still have felt very foreign. As you had contemplated after talking to her alone in the kitchen months ago, you’d had cause and opportunity to see parts of her father’s heart that she hadn’t— not before now, anyway.

“I’ll walk you out to your car,” he offered, because he could see that she was tired, and just wanted to go home with Ben.

“Alright— thanks, dad,” she agreed. After giving you a wave and a smile, she thanked you too (although you really weren’t sure what for; this was all Anakin’s effort, as far as you were concerned), and walked out the door ahead of him. He didn’t need to tell you he’d be right back.

You had always thought highly of Anakin, even when he hadn’t really felt that way about himself. Right now, though, you’d never seen him be a more incredible parent... or person, for that matter. He’d assured you when you had first reconnected with him that he was going to show you a better part of himself, and you hoped he understood what a fantastic job he was doing at keeping his promise.

Whether he liked it or not, you mused, you might just have to tell him so when he came back inside.

...

“I’m sorry,” he said, as you were getting ready to go upstairs to bed later that same night.

“What for?” you asked. Ani, in recent months, had taken to thanking you more often than he apologized to you. It was a subtle shift, but one that you appreciated him having made... partly because it signalled that when he _did_ say he was sorry for something, you knew he meant it with utmost sincerity. What was he talking about right now, though?

He stepped up closely to you, and although he looked happy, he also appeared a bit unsure of himself. Talking about his feelings did that to him; it had always been fine with you. You didn’t mind being patient.

Finally, “...I never realized what I was really doing, when I was still giving up on myself.” He glanced away briefly; shifted a bit. “Now I can see that I was giving up on my kids too, not to mention fucking you up later on. I know that what happened when they were born was my fault— so was having to take care of them by myself, along with everything else after that. I just wish I hadn’t lingered on it for so fucking long back then, and I want you to know how sorry I am that I did.”

“None of it was really your fault, Ani,” you assured him. He’d been suffering from what must have been very acute post-traumatic stress when he’d hurt his pregnant wife; by the time he’d met you, he had grown too frightened of himself to do much of anything about it other than try to quell the intensity of his emotions. “You were sick,” you said, because that was how you’d always seen it. He had started trying again after going back to his family from the hotel room; from what you could tell, he hadn’t stopped since. In your eyes, the presence of both you and his grandson in his life were proof that he’d achieved a great measure of success.

“Maybe,” he ceded, “but looking back on it, there was a lot more I could have done. I wish I had, because now I can see how much time I wasted being miserable when I didn’t have to be.” He seemed to want to somehow get closer to you, and move farther away at the same time. You took his natural hand in yours and squeezed his fingers; hoped it felt encouraging to him. It must have, because he added to his lamentation, “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want to fuck up again and waste any more.”

“You won’t,” you told him. “I can tell you won’t.” You understood his being scared, but really, you knew he had no reason to be.

He squeezed back; said quietly, “Thank you for forgiving me.”

“You’ve already thanked me for that,” you said. He had— endlessly.

“No I haven’t,” he told you. 

“What?”

He sighed and looked down at the floor. “We both know I put my hand around your neck, too.” 

You’d talked about that after it had happened, when you’d decided for yourself that you simply couldn’t live with your relationship ending that way. He’d admitted that he ought to have warned you of any potential danger he posed to you before you had cause to experience it, but had also confessed that he’d never expected to get as close to you as he did. 

“Oh,” you said. “You know we’ve moved past that too, don’t you?” You truly had. You still didn’t wake him when he’d fallen asleep without you in the house; although he’d worked hard over several years to diminish the risk he posed in such a situation, you felt it wasn’t fair to test that particular part of his resolve. You’d already thought about the small number of caveats which were inherent in being with Ani; all things considered, that one concession was minuscule. 

“Between that and a million other things,” he said, “you should never have given me so many chances.” He tightened his grip on your hand a bit further as he looked back into your eyes. “I just want you to know that I understand _exactly_ how lucky I am, and that I’m not going to let you down anymore. Not now; not ever.” 

“It’s okay, Ani. It always has been, and it always will be.” You reached up to touch his hair, just because it was something you liked to do. “Being without you has always hurt more than being with you”, you smiled. “Even back when being with you was painful.”

“I _still_ have no fucking clue what you see in me,” he told you, and proceeded to laugh heartily at himself. He’d said that same thing to you back in the hotel, and a few more times since reuniting with you, too.

“I see lots in you. You know I always have.” 

“...Is it alright if I still don’t quite understand it?” 

He asked his question coyly, and with that lopsided grin of his you’d always loved so much. It made you crane upward to kiss him before answering, “Of course it’s alright.” Like everything else, it really was perfectly fine. “You don’t have to understand it, as long as you know it means I’ll always be here.”

“I do know,” he confirmed. “And I’ll always be grateful to you for helping me be someone who can be here for you, too.”

You led him up the stairs by the hand, after that... because even though you knew that he wouldn’t want to hear you use words to tell him how much you admired everything he’d done for his kids and for you, you still felt the need to communicate exactly how you felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t describe how satisfying and rewarding it feels for me to write him like this after making him such a dysfunctional old crazypants for so goddamn long leading up to it. If you’re still here, then thank you as always— it’s almost over, now (but not quite!!). If this is altogether too domestic for you, then that’s okay, too; I’m happy to have had you reading for any length of time.
> 
> I might write lots of weird fucking shit, but this is where my heart lives.


	23. So?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a long one this time.

“You can’t microwave that!”

“Huh? Why not?” 

“I— well... I don’t actually know. All I know is that your dad said not to.”

Anakin was out, you were at the house with Luke, and Leia’s son was throwing a fit from inside a bassinet you’d rolled into the kitchen as you attempted to negotiate the preparation of his next meal.

“It’s a microwave. What are microwaves for? _Heating food._ Formula is food; why can’t I use the microwave to heat it?” 

You supposed he had a point, but you were also determined to follow the instructions you’d been given for taking care of Ben. You had told Anakin you weren’t experienced with babies who were as young as his grandson happened to be, but he’d insisted that you would do fine. It had seemed a relief to have Luke stop by just as Ani had left, but right now you just wished he’d heat the bottle in a pot on the stove as he’d been told, rather than attempting a shortcut against which you’d specifically been warned.

“I don’t want to mess this up, okay? What if we... I don’t know— give him radiation poisoning or something?” 

Luke rolled his eyes. “Microwaves don’t do that,” he said dismissively. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Your dad doesn’t say things for no reason,” you pointed out. “Can you _please_ just do this the way he told us to do it?” The baby was still crying; he’d been fussy since his grandfather had left, but now he was hungry, and not at all shy about letting you know it. “If you don’t want to do it the right way, then I’ll just—”

“Okay! Fine!” Luke walked away from the microwave with the bottle in his hand; demonstrated his acquiescence by retrieving a pot from the cupboard and beginning to fill it with water. “He’s going to have to wait longer for it this way, though.”

You shrugged, and stepped over to the bassinet. Carefully, you took Ben out of it, and held him against your shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. “It’s okay— you’ll be eating soon enough.” You looked at Luke after that, and thanked him for listening. “Anyway,” you added, “he’s been upset the entire time we’ve been looking after him— he’s only ever quiet for your dad.”

“Really?” asked Luke, as he started to heat the water. 

“Really. Even Leia says she can’t get him to calm down the way he can.” You turned your gaze back toward the infant in your arms; he was still fussing, albeit a bit less dramatically now that he was being held. Although he couldn’t understand you yet, you asked him, “You sure love your grandpa, don’t you?”

All he could do to respond, of course, was yell... but, at least his yelling was cute. 

“He loves you right back, you know,” said Luke to Ben when he finally arrived with the warm bottle. He looked at you after that; asked, “Mind if I do it this time? You get to see him more than I do.”

“Go ahead,” you offered, and you gently handed off the baby. Luke positioned him in his own arms, although not without a bit of awkwardness— it seemed that he was even less used to infants than you were; however, it was also clear that he was highly motivated toward getting to know his new nephew. 

As he sat down in one of the kitchen chairs so that he could help Ben start to eat, he said to the baby quietly, “Your grandma would have loved to meet you too, you know,” which made you feel a bit sad... not only for Luke, but for Ben and Leia, too. Not to mention Anakin; who, although he’d been processing his grief with more aptitude than you’d ever have expected, you knew still experienced moments during which he felt her loss acutely.

Your expression must have changed, because Luke started, “I’m sorry— I didn’t mean—”

“No,” you interrupted, “I understand— I wish she could meet him, too.” In truth, it wasn’t fair that Padmé wasn’t alive to meet her first grandchild... but, it was what it was. 

“Things happen the way they’re meant to happen, I guess,” he said, echoing your own thoughts. Once Ben was comfortably taking the bottle, he went on, “Anyway, if my mom were here, my dad wouldn’t have nearly as much to do. I think it makes him happy to be able to be useful to Leia.”

That brought a smile back to your face, because you knew he was right. You thought about everything Anakin did for Ben; considered once more just how obvious their bond was. Would it still have been that way if he hadn’t been Leia’s only living parent? You really didn’t think so. 

“It seems to make her happy to have him try for her,” you told Luke. “They’re kind of different with each other now, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “She actually talks to him.”

Just at that moment, both of your heads turned in response to the sound of the front door opening. Since you already knew it was Anakin, you waited for him to come into the kitchen. When he did, you started to greet him... but, you stopped when you registered the expression on his face. “What’s wrong?” you asked, as he glided past you and over to where Luke was sitting with Ben.

“Has that been in the microwave?” he asked abruptly, before looking at you and asking, “You remembered what I said, didn’t you?”

“I remembered— and no, it hasn’t been. _What’s wrong?_ ”

“Nothing.” He glanced back at Luke, then. “Finish feeding the baby, and get him ready to go. Okay?”

“Go where?” asked Luke. “We just got him quiet. Without you here, all he did was scr—”

“His dad is coming to pick him up,” Anakin interrupted. “He says he’s got a bunch of time off, and that he wants to take care of him now while Leia’s at work.” That should have been good news, but Anakin seemed distinctly annoyed. “I have to go upstairs and change my shirt, okay? I smell like a goddamn ashtray. _Have Ben ready to leave when I come back down.”_ He turned away after that and walked out of the room without another word.

 _”What the hell?”_ Luke mouthed at you near-silently, as his dad’s footsteps ascended the staircase. 

You just shrugged, and held out your arms so that you could take the baby: You’d noticed his bottle was now empty; wanted to get him ready to go, as Anakin had requested. You knew he’d just been to therapy (you’d scheduled today off weeks ago, and that was why you were at home), and while he always tended to smoke in his car on the way back, you’d grown accustomed to him coming out of his appointments in a better mood than when he’d gone into them.

Once you’d taken the newly-placated baby over to the front door, you knelt down in front of his car-seat, which was sitting on the floor. As carefully as you’d handed him between yourself and Luke for most of the afternoon, you placed him into it and began the process of strapping him in. His fresh sleepiness made it easier than it would have been otherwise, but it was still somewhat of a challenge for you. Anakin always made it seem easy; in fact, he made everything about taking care of Ben seem easy. He might have told you that his time alone with his own infant twins had been difficult for him, but it was during moments such as this one that you were reminded of how very well his aptitude spoke for itself.

Just as you began to regret that he’d never seen himself as being as capable with his own kids as he seemed to realize he was with Ben, you heard a new car pull into the driveway. The noise was followed by that of a honking horn; then, what sounded like the loud bark of a large dog. 

Before you had a chance to think of what to do about it, Ben was crying again, and you could hear Anakin coming down the stairs, having retrieved his fresh shirt.

“What did you do?” he asked, and he sounded distinctly irritated.

“Nothing!” You stood up from the floor. “It was noise from outside— I think Leia’s boyfriend just pulled up. Does he have a dog?”

Anakin rolled his eyes; made a frustrated noise. “Fuck,” he muttered in spite of the baby; then, he walked over to the front door and opened it. His timing was perfect, because right at that moment, Han and his animal companion arrived on the front step. You’d only ever met him once before, briefly— and you certainly hadn’t met his dog.

“That thing is _not_ coming in here,” was the first thing Anakin said; the second was, “And for god’s sake, don’t let it lick my grandson.”

“Relax, old man,” said Han coolly. “Chewie’s had all his shots— haven’t you, Chewie?” The dog barked again, presumably in response to his own name. He was big and fuzzy and brown, and seemed to be drooling rather copiously. You thought he was kind of cute, but Anakin certainly didn’t seem to agree. He picked up the car seat from the floor, and held Ben up to to say goodbye (just the sight of Ani’s face seemed to calm him) before holding him out to Han, who greeted him enthusiastically. 

He was beaming quite proudly, in fact. Even if Anakin was not especially fond of the man with whom his daughter had chosen to procreate, you had to admit that it was heartening to see the way Han’s eyes lit up when he looked at his new little boy.

“Shots or no shots, he’s staying outside,” Anakin said of poor Chewie, as he glared at the dog.

“Then I’ll just grab my kid and go, I guess,” answered Han snidely. He started to turn away from the door.

 _”Hey,”_ called Anakin after him, picking up a bag from the floor of the foyer and holding it up. “Don’t you think you might end up needing some of his things?”

“Oh— yeah, I guess I might,” admitted the new father, moving to take the bag with an expression of ever-so-slight contrition. “Thanks,” he said, once he had slung it over the shoulder of the arm he wasn’t using to tote the car seat.

“Just try not to drive like a goddamn maniac with Ben in the car, if you can help it,” Anakin said in return. “Do you want me to come out and show you how to—”

“Leia already showed me how to put the seat in,” Han interrupted, and he turned once again; this time, he sauntered all the way back to where he’d parked his car, while his dog followed loyally behind him. You still thought Chewie was cute, but you weren’t about to say so; not right now.

By the time Anakin had closed the door and stepped all the way back into the house, Luke had joined you in the foyer.

“Fuck!” said Anakin, this time more than loudly enough for everyone to hear. He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from out of his pocket (they’d been lasting him a lot longer recently than they used to), took one out, and stuck it into his mouth without lighting it.

“What the hell is your problem?” asked Luke, and you were glad to have him say it for you. 

“Nothing,” answered the elder of the two, and although that was clearly not true, the way in which it had been said seemed to be enough to cause his son to back off.

“...Okay,” Luke said tentatively. “I think I’m going to go, then— now that you don’t need me anymore.” He looked at you as he said that last part; you smiled and thanked him for his help with the baby. He gathered his things after that, and walked out the door toward the stop for the bus which usually took him home from his dad’s house.

Once he was gone, you finally turned to Anakin again. He was standing by the entrance to the kitchen, unlit cigarette still hanging loosely from his mouth. It had been a while since you’d been unable to discern the look on his face, but right now you simply couldn’t decode him.

“What _is_ the problem?” you asked, as you approached him. Very gently, you placed a hand on his chest; looked up at him curiously. “Did something come up today while you were—”

“No!” He shook his head. “No— no; it’s not that.”

“I know you’re not a big fan of Han,” you tried, “but I think he’s going to do fine with—”

“It’s not that, either!” he insisted; then, “I’m going to go downstairs for a while— okay?”

“Okay,” you said. “If you need to talk—”

 _”I’m fine_ — I’ll come back up in a bit.”

You only nodded in response to that. Seeming relieved, Anakin walked off down the hall— away from you, and toward his basement. He didn’t close the door behind him as he stepped heavily down the stairs; however, you did hear him finally light that cigarette of his before disappearing into what used to be his favourite place to go.

You didn’t mind that he seemed to need some time by himself; however, the insistent strength of his sour mood made you hope that he might elect to tell you just what was bothering him so much when he was ready to come back up.

...

As it turned out, Ani would remain downstairs for a very long time. You’d cleaned up after Luke and Ben, checked in with Leia by text to make sure she knew that her son would already be at home with his father when she left work, cooked and ate dinner, and read Padmé’s most recent newspaper in its entirety. You’d heard the sounds of Anakin taking out his apparent negative energy on his punching bag, followed by the faint but distinct smell of cigarette smoke coming through the vent. It almost took you back in time to when you used to listen in on him after putting his children to bed.

When the noises stopped and the smoke faded, you expected him to come upstairs and rejoin you as he typically did... however, he stayed in the basement. You had a shower, put your things together for work the next day, and got ready to go to bed before finally deciding that you ought to check on him. You hoped he wouldn’t be angry; that he might understand your concern— after all, he hadn’t acted like this for a while, now.

“Ani?” you called down the stairs tentatively. If he happened to be asleep, you didn’t want to wake him. When you thought you detected movement, you opted to continue on, even if all you ended up doing was kissing him goodnight. As long as he was alright, you were fine with leaving him to work on his hand, or on the rest of his body, or to do whatever else he might feel like doing down there to improve his mood. “Anakin?” 

When you pushed open the door to his little room, you almost walked right back out— he was laying so still on the bed that he looked to be asleep; again, you weren’t about to wake him. He stopped you, however, with a quiet, “Hey,” before you had a chance to leave.

Knowing that he was awake and— perhaps— ready to talk made you smile while you paced over to the tiny mattress. “Hey,” you said back. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted sedately; propped himself up on his elbow as you sat down next to him on the bed. He was shirtless, and still damp with sweat. “I’m sorry for being an ass earlier,” he added, which you thought was nice of him.

“You weren’t that bad,” you said kindly, and he really hadn’t been. “What got to you, though?” You’d been curious all afternoon and evening; while you highly suspected it had to do with Ben’s departure, you really couldn’t be certain.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he told you, and he offered a very thin smile. 

“It does to me— and anyway, it seems like whatever it is, it’s still bothering you.”

He only shrugged, and laid back down with his head on the pillow while he looked up at the ceiling.

“Are you sure it’s not about Han?”

“No, it’s not about Han.”

“That dog of his has a certain charm to it, you know.”

He made a face. “No it doesn’t.”

You repressed a laugh. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

That reminded you: “Hey— we get married next month. Can you believe how quickly that’s coming up?”

At least that made him perk up a bit. “No, I can’t believe it... but, I also can’t wait to be your husband. I almost wish I could fast-forward through the next few weeks.”

“I know what you mean,” you said, and you reached over to place a hand on his shoulder. It happened to be the hand on which you were wearing the engagement ring he’d made for you, and that seemed to entrance him a bit. He appeared to be deep in thought for several moments before you asked him, “What are you thinking about?”

He sighed, and continued to stare at your ring out the corner of his eye. Finally, “I guess I’m going to miss having Ben around.”

“He’ll still visit,” you said. “You know that. Anyway, Han can’t stay off the road forever, can he? I’m sure Leia’s going to need you to look after him again at some point.”

“You’re right,” he said, and although he stopped talking, it didn’t sound to you as though he were quite finished.

“But...?” you prompted him.

“... _But,_ I guess that’s not really all it is,” and now he sounded nervous.

“Then what else is there?”

He sat up all the way at that point; looked as if he might be gauging how much he felt he could tell you. As with his bad mood earlier, he hadn’t acted quite like this for a long time. “It’s not only that I miss Ben,” he admitted before looking away. After a moment of hesitation, he said a bit more quietly than you were used to, “...I miss being a dad.”

You tilted your head; you didn’t quite understand. “You’re still a dad, Ani— Luke and Leia love you, and they’re always going to need you.”

“I know,” he said, “but I guess that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Then what _are_ you talking about?”

“What I mean is that taking care of Ben made me realize how much I didn’t appreciate what I did for my own kids when they were that age, or what they did for me. I miss taking care of them when they were little, but I also regret not being able to put enough of myself into it when they were younger.” He shifted on the bed; shook his head. “I know it’s too late to go back and change any of it, but...” He shot you an earnest smile before finishing, “...I’m starting to feel like I’d love to get another chance at it.”

“Another chance?” you asked.

“...Do you remember when we talked about me wasting your time? You know— ‘the kind of time you only have so much of’?”

“I remember,” you said. “I told you not to worry, because all I ever wanted was to have more time with _you_ — and I meant that.”

He stared at you for a few long moments; scooted closer to you on the bed. “...What would you say if I told you I wanted to do more with you than just get married?”

“I guess I’d wonder what you meant by ‘more’,” you told him, although you were starting to think you might understand. Surely he didn’t mean...?

He sighed once more; now he sounded frustrated again, although you couldn’t tell if it was with you, or with himself.

When he couldn’t seem to find the words to express himself, you took a leap and decided to help him out. “...Are you asking for a baby, Anakin?”

“What if I am?”

Your stomach did a somersault, but you couldn’t keep yourself from smiling. Why were you smiling? “You’re fifty years old,” you said.

“So?”

You thought about Ben; thought about watching Anakin take care of him. He’d stayed overnight at the house more than once by now, and you’d never once had to help with a late-night feeding, diaper change, or anything else. Every time the baby had so much as made a sound, Ani had been right there. Always immediately; always without complaint.

“So,” you said anyway, “if we have a baby, you’ll be seventy by the time they’re Luke and Leia’s age.”

_”So?”_

You stared at him, because you didn’t know what to say. Your points, you realized, weren’t really points. Still... “Are you sure you aren’t just thinking about this because of Ben? You won’t miss him forever, you know. And like I said— I have a feeling Leia’s going to need your help with him again.”

He examined your face, and then he reached out with his hand to touch it. He was gentle, slow, and very deliberate. “It’s not that,” he said. “As soon as we finished talking about it the first time, the thought of having a family with you got stuck in my head.” He laughed at himself. “I had the same thoughts you’re having right now— about being too old; about not having enough time. But the idea of it wouldn’t go away, and having Ben here...” He almost trailed off at that, but seemed to force his thoughts back on-track. “...Having him here made me realize that this is something I can still do— maybe even better than I did the last time I had the chance.” He shrugged, now. “I thought maybe he would help me get it out of my system; that’s part of why I was so fucking pissed off when I found out he wasn’t going to be around as much.”

“Because it still isn’t out of your system yet, you mean?” You’d leaned in more closely to him without quite realizing it. He was still touching your face, and now you were almost nose-to-nose. 

“I don’t think I _can_ get it out of my system,” he confessed.

“I don’t know, Ani. I—” 

“I’d take care of you,” he insisted emphatically. _“Both_ of you. I’ll do absolutely anything you ask me to do.” He craned to kiss you; then, “Whatever I have to do for you to make this happen, I’ll do it. _I promise.”_

“Anakin,” you said, and you placed your hand atop his on the side of your face. You didn’t know what to say to him just then.

“Please? Will you just _think_ about it?” he implored, and he kissed you again; this time on the side of your mouth. He did it as tenderly as you’d ever felt him do anything. He really wanted this, you thought— he really, _truly_ wanted it. You’d always regarded the notion of having children with Anakin to be in the realm of fantasy: Something that was nice to think about sometimes, but also something that was not to become a reality. Yet here he was, suggesting with utmost seriousness that the two of you try to make a baby together.

That was when you remembered that you’d once regarded the life you were living right now as something that could only ever happen in your dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _It could take weeks for me to say_   
>  _How it'll take forever to go away_   
>  _And it takes everything you have_   
>  _Eeeeverythinggg to be in **love**_
> 
> 🎵🎶🎵
> 
> So, you’re not supposed to microwave baby food or milk ‘cause the microwave doesn’t heat stuff evenly, so even if part of the food feels cool enough to eat, the middle or bottom of it or whatever might be wayyyy too hot. Irrelevant to me because I don’t own a microwave, but it got drilled into my head anyhow. I’m glad it did, because that interaction/premise was cute to me. 
> 
> Oh, and I’ve been meaning to ask for a while if anyone reading this has seen ‘Corvette Summer’. Mark Hamill in that movie is basically how I picture Luke in this story. :P
> 
> Next chapter will most likely be the last. I’ve already written most of it, and I genuinely hope that it offers an emotionally satisfying conclusion, along with a couple of neat callbacks to the last story. If you stick around for it, then I’m infinitely grateful to you. Even if you don’t, I’m still happy to have had you for this long. I love this story, and if other people love it too, then I’m pretty thrilled by that. 
> 
> Wish me luck & I’ll see you soon. :)
> 
> PS — if you were the one who suggested adding Chewie, thank you and I love you.


	24. Together

Your wedding to Anakin ended up being both as small and as meaningful as you’d have hoped: Your own mother had shown up (your father had opted to skip the entire affair; however, you regarded that as being more his loss than yours), as had Anakin’s children; along, of course, with little Ben. Some of your own friends had attended; a few from work, and a few more from school, along with a small scattering of men Anakin had introduced as being the remaining members of the unit he’d served with during his time in Afghanistan. They were largely as strange and wonderful as Ani himself, and you were more than happy to have met them.

You’d opted to wear a relatively unadorned dress; it was a subtle shade of off-white cream, and it was beautiful— you knew, because Anakin couldn’t seem to stop telling you as much. For his part, he had surprised you immensely by acquiescing to tradition and putting on his old military dress uniform. It was the same one he’d always had (and the same one he’d never liked), with its impeccable tailoring, and impressive array of decorations pinned onto the jacket. He’d even worn the cap and the impossibly shiny boots which went along with it; on top of all that, the whole thing fit him in precisely the same way it had ten years prior. It served to remind you of all the ways in which he’d changed since you had first met him, along with all of the ways in which he’d remained the same.

More than anything else, he looked as powerfully handsome in it as he ever had, and on the day of your wedding, you didn’t feel the need to stop yourself from telling him so. He did laugh at you, but he didn’t complain— not that time.

The ceremony itself had been short and simple; however, the words you had spoken to one another were both commanding and lovely: You wouldn’t have changed it for the world. There had been a reception as well, and while meeting Anakin’s ‘guys’ as he called them was fun and interesting (he’d finally interacted at length with some of your friends, too, who accepted him unquestioningly), you knew that you were both relieved to disperse at the end of it. Neither of you had ever been especially fond of parties; besides, all you wanted on that day was to be together, and you both knew it.

Now, having happily dispensed with the formalities, you found yourselves alone with one another in a very familiar place... however, that place was by no means your home.

“Is this even the same _room?”_ asked Anakin incredulously. He was still wearing his full military regalia (along with an enormous grin spread across his face), and you remained in your dress. You’d drawn a few strange looks from the staff and other guests who had been milling about the check-in area: This hotel, after all, was not exactly a prime honeymoon destination. They, however, could not possibly have understood just how special this place happened to be to you.

“I think it is— 213, right?”

“How did you manage that?”

“I booked it ahead of time,” you answered, returning his expression. “And anyway, it’s not as if these rooms are in especially high demand.” 

He laughed at that. “Thank you,” he said. “I can’t think of another place I’d rather be with you right now, you know.”

You’d always appreciated the fact that Anakin seemed to share your admittedly somewhat strange sense of sentimentality. Maybe neither of you should have wanted to come back here; however, you both smiled broadly as you looked around the room, taking note of what had and hadn’t changed about the place to which you’d once retreated from the rest of the world.

Maybe you didn’t mind being here again because this time you didn’t have anything to run away from.

Most of it _hadn’t_ changed, even after a decade— if any of the furniture had been replaced, you’d never have known it. The pattern on the bedspread happened to be a bit different, but only barely. Even the big, old, archaic television set atop the desk at the front of the room was the same. The coffee maker was still the only appliance to be seen, meaning that there was still nowhere to heat up a can of soup. After suppressing a chuckle at that last thought, you turned to face Anakin; looked him up and down.

“I’m sure you don’t want to hear this,” you acknowledged, “but I’ve always thought you looked absolutely incredible wearing that uniform— thank you for putting it on today.”

He shrugged. “I know you like it— and anyway, I wanted to match with my guys,” he said, meaning the guests he had invited. 

“You wear it best,” you told him, and that was very honest. You grasped the lapels on his jacket, and ran your eyes across the shiny array of medals pinned onto his chest before looking back up at him. “The first time I ever saw you wear it, I thought you looked like something out of a movie.”

“Absolutely nothing about me is movie-material,” he laughed at you, displaying more than a hint of that complete lack of self-awareness you’d always found so inexplicably endearing. When you only shook your head at him and smiled, he went on, “Even though you like it, do you think you could help me get out of it, now?”

“Sure,” you said, as he took a step back and held out his arms for the purpose of allowing you to help him with his cufflinks. You knew he had always particularly loathed the cufflinks.

As you started to assist him, he mentioned offhandedly, “You’d think they’d make these fucking uniforms easier to put on and take off, given how many of the guys who wear them get hacked to bits.”

You’d never thought of it that way, really, but you supposed he was right. “There,” you said, taking the cufflinks in your hand and placing them on the desk next to the television, and his cap, which was the first thing he’d taken off following his boots. “Now the buttons on the jacket, right?”

He nodded, and you stepped up closely again; unfastened the row of big, shiny embellishments from top to bottom. He thanked you as you helped him pull the inordinately heavy blazer off over his prosthesis, and hang it on the back of the chair pushed uselessly into the desk with the TV. 

He loosened his tie after that, and tugged it off over his head before tossing it onto the desk, too. That tousled his hair just enough to make him look like himself again. As much as you loved the flawless tailoring of his uniform and the highly-polished appearance he took on when he wore it, you knew that it wasn’t really ‘him’: In spite of his natural beauty (and in spite of the strength of the relationship between him and his punching bag), you knew very well that Anakin didn’t care much about what he looked like. He never had.

“That’s better,” he said, as he gave his head a shake and undid the first couple of buttons on the crisp, white shirt he’d had on beneath the jacket.

“Thank you for wearing it, Ani,” you said, because you hadn’t asked him to do it— it was just something he’d done to be thoughtful. 

He chuckled; stretched his arms. “Anything for you— even if it _is_ hot and itchy.”

“Are you feeling hot and itchy right now?” you asked, eyeing the shower as you did. This was the first place you’d ever had the pleasure of standing beneath a stream of hot water with him; you’d never forget how it felt to have him kiss you through the steam in that tiny little box. Your shower at what was now your home was infinitely larger in comparison, but this one— somehow— was special.

“I am,” he confirmed. “Were you thinking what I was thinking?”

“I think I was,” you grinned.

“Let’s go, then,” he said, and he continued to use that uncannily-skilled left hand of his to finish unfastening the buttons on the front of his shirt, discarding it before carefully removing his right forearm as well.

“I’m going to need some help, too,” you said, and you turned your back to him; motioned to the long zipper running down the back of your dress. A traditional wedding dress was distinctly unlike anything else you’d ever have elected to put on. Yours was lovely, but the way you felt about wearing it happened to come very close to mirroring the way Ani felt about wearing his uniform: You were eager to take it off.

Wordlessly, he moved to assist you; grasped the tab of the zipper between his thumb and forefinger, and pulled it down smoothly. As soon as the back fell open, you moved to tug it the rest of the way off, stepping out of it carefully before draping it over the back of the chair along with his blazer. When you turned back to Anakin, you found that he had wasted no time doing just the same thing with his own pants, along with what he’d been wearing underneath them. In spite of the freshly-ironed crease running down each leg of the trousers, he simply left them with his belt in a pile on the floor. 

You started to reach around behind your back to unclasp your bra; however, you paused— Ani looked as if he had something to say.

“What is it?”

“...Would you mind if I got that for you?” he asked somewhat tentatively. 

“Not at all,” you smiled, and you stepped up very close so that he could reach around your body and perform what you knew to be one of his favourite tricks. 

Once he’d freed you, you wiggled out of your panties as he leaned in for a kiss. 

“I love you, Anakin,” you said to him when he pulled away. 

“I love you, too,” he assured you, and although he was still smiling, his eyes almost seemed to glisten with what might very well have been freshly-emerging tears. “I’m sorry I made you wait so long for this,” he added, and for the first time that day you could hear a tinge of very old guilt creeping into his voice. 

“Don’t be sorry,” you gently scolded him, while you reached up to touch his face. _”Never be sorry for that._ You were always worth waiting for— even when I thought I’d never get you back.”

You expected him to argue with you, but he didn’t; not right now. Instead he simply reminded you, “I never stopped loving you— not for a second. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t found you again.”

“That’s something neither of us has to worry about anymore,” you said, and after taking a minute to admire the love coming through in his expression, you took your husband by the hand and led him off to the shower. 

It made you as uniquely happy as it made him to have been able to come back to the first place you’d ever felt belonged solely to the two of you.

...

Once you exited the shower, you and Ani virtually chased each other right onto the closest bed: You didn’t even bother to throw back the covers prior to getting tangled up together. He ran his hand up and down you endlessly; likewise, you touched gratefully every part of his body which happened to be within your reach. 

You knew him so well by now; all of him felt both familiar and absolutely incredible to you: Every strand of hair on his head; every single jolting, overwrought muscle. All of his scars, divots, and lines; every inch of his skin, in fact, from that on his face, to the smooth tract of it covering the abrupt end of his arm; right on down his legs, and all the way to his feet. He was perfect— every part of his body, and every little piece of everything else that had always made Anakin the person you’d fallen in love with.

He knew your body just as intimately as you knew his; to add to that, he demonstrated his appreciation in a way which was very similar to how you expressed your own. There was a lot about you that was different from Ani, and vice-versa... however, for all that was different, you both happened to show your love in just about the same way. It was part of how you knew you both were stuck with one another, and also why you were certain that fact was never going to bother you.

You needed to be stuck with Anakin, and he needed to be stuck with you.

“Thank you,” he said, as he finally braced himself atop you and kissed the side of your face.

“You don’t have to thank me,” you told him in return. It felt wonderful to experience his warmth this way. Nothing, to you, had ever felt more right.

“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” 

“What?” you asked, because you didn’t understand; followed very quickly by, _”Oh!”_ because your lack of understanding was extremely short-lived. “No,” you said. “No, I haven’t changed my mind!”

“So we’re still...?”

 _”Yes,”_ you confirmed. “We’re still trying to have a baby, Ani.” You hadn’t touched anything even resembling your birth control for weeks; you had no plans to do so again any time soon. Ani had asked you to ‘think about it’, and you had— thoroughly. 

As it turned out, you wanted to have a family with him as much as he wanted to have one with you.

“Then I _do_ need to thank you,” he said. “I’ve told you before— _no one gets as many chances as you’ve given me.”_

You only kissed him, because he made you feel fantastically fortunate in just the same way. Everything that should have kept you apart over the course of more than a decade seemed only to have brought you closer together. You were as grateful for him as he was for you, because— again— you needed him.

At that point, you reached downward; grasped him tightly in your hand. You said his name as you guided him exactly as you always had; you loved to show him how much you wanted him in this precise way. It was then that he began to move; however, he wasn’t quick or rough or desperate, as he’d been the last time you had come here together. Instead, he began slowly; seemed to take his time: He must have known as well as you that you finally had as much of it as you had always wanted. Neither time nor place seemed to mean very much of anything anymore, in fact, now that you had finally declared to the rest of the world that you belonged to one another. 

You didn’t mind one bit that the two of you were the only ones who would ever truly understand that you always had.

...

“Can you make him move?”

“I can drink juice, and I can poke him— but if he’s asleep, then he’s asleep.”

Anakin was knelt down on the floor in front of you, while you sat on the couch in the living room. You’d been his wife for nearly a year by this point, and right now, he had his hand set gently atop the obvious protrusion of your pregnant belly. It was evidence of the success you’d already had in your endeavour to create a child together, and as you had somewhat expected, Ani was captivated: He simply could not seem to keep his hands away from you.

“What makes you think it’s a boy, anyway?” you asked, because you (much like Leia, when she’d been expecting Ben) didn’t especially care to know whether the baby you were carrying was male or female until it decided to come out of you.

“I don’t know,” he answered, moving his hand around in an effort to detect a kick. “It’s just a feeling I have.” He looked to think for a minute; after that, he peered up at your face. “You’re positive there’s only _one_ in there, right?”

You laughed. “I promise, Ani— only one.” Part of you had been slightly nervous at the prospect of having Anakin get you pregnant; twins did tend to run in families. Maybe he would have been fine with it, but two babies at once would likely have been a bit much for you to handle. Aside from that, you’d been right about Leia: In spite of Han’s time away from his job, Anakin did still frequently look after Ben for her. He was here right now, in fact; his parents were due to arrive within the next hour or so, both to pick up their son, and to have dinner with you as well.

Ben yelled from inside of his playpen; you’d set it up near the sofa, and he was currently practicing pulling himself up onto his feet by grabbing at the walls of the little structure. He was still a lovely baby; big for his age in spite of his prematurity, and with a sense of stubbornness he could have inherited as easily from Anakin as he could have from Leia. Ben was still incredibly attached to his grandfather, who was thrilled at the prospect of his grandson getting to grow up with the baby he was now having with you. 

“How’s my new little sibling?” Luke asked, as he walked into the room and observed his father trying to make your baby move around for him. He’d been here all afternoon, and was planning on staying for dinner as well. He noticed Ben; reached into the playpen to pick him up and take him out. 

“Pretty quiet,” Anakin answered, “but I have a feeling that’s not going to last for very long.” You did, too. No one in Anakin’s family was especially prone to keeping their feelings to themselves, even when they tried; it was part of why you’d grown to enjoy being around them as much as you did. 

“You still want to go outside and practise with me, or are you just going to sit there and poke the baby all day?” Luke had set down his kendo equipment by the front door on his way in; aside from staying for dinner, he’d planned to swing his sword around with his dad, too. It was something they did together frequently, now: In spite of Anakin’s overall negative evaluation of his own ability with regard to his preferred sport, it seemed that once he’d picked up his shinai again, putting it down had proved to be a challenge. You didn’t mind that one bit; in fact, both his enthusiasm and aptitude made you feel incredibly proud of him.

“Of course I do,” Anakin answered, and— not without some reluctance— he took his hand off of your stomach and stood up straight. “I guess I can bug my other kid again when he decides to wake up,” he added, smiling down at you.

“Any time,” you told him, and you meant it. Anakin poked and prodded at you all the time now that you were carrying his child, and you didn’t mind it one bit. You appreciated beyond description how much he already seemed to love being involved with the new life you’d decided to create together. 

“Alright, then,” he said, and he turned to Luke, who had just set Ben down on the couch beside you. He sat happily; you certainly didn’t mind entertaining him until his parents arrived. “Let’s go— your sister’s going to be here soon; we don’t have a ton of time.”

“I don’t _need_ a ton of time,” Luke bragged. “I have a few new tricks up my sleeve— believe me when I say I’m going to catch you off-guard this time.” He looked confident, but you had your doubts.

Anakin must have too, because as he started to step over to the front door, he looked over his shoulder and told Luke decidedly, “Not today you won’t— believe _me_. Let me just grab my stuff from the garage, and I’ll prove it to you.”

You watched them walk away together (the baby had just started to finally shift about, but you weren’t about to pull Ani away from Luke right now), with absolutely no doubt in your mind that the elder of the two would end up winning this particular match.

More than anyone else in the world, you knew that when Anakin Skywalker said he was going to prove himself, he meant it with all of his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I hope you liked reading that story as much as I liked writing it. This is the ending I always wanted to give them; it just turned out that I had to be a bit more creative in getting them there than I anticipated. I started ‘The Babysitter’ in November of last year, and I never expected the story of Reader’s relationship with Anakin to ever get this long. I’m glad I didn’t leave them hanging, even though writing this was sometimes a bit difficult. Frankly, I think ‘Counselling’ is the better of the two stories by far; I’m glad I started it, and even _more_ glad that I finished it.
> 
> If you’re someone who still happens to be unhappy with where I’ve left them, I do apologize sincerely— but, this feels like a very natural, very organic place to end the whole thing. They’re married, they’re having a baby, and they’re more in love than they’ve ever been. Luke and Leia are both happy with Anakin and with Reader too, and Ani has both tackled his grief, and (in my eyes) more than proven that he is capable of handling what’s ahead of him. He really is always going to be my hero.
> 
> I’m not promising to never write these guys again; that would be silly of me given how much I’ve enjoyed them so far. _But,_ I’m more than satisfied with the prospect of leaving them here for the time being... because to me, this feels very ‘right’.
> 
> Thank you for being here; everyone who’s interacted with this story in any way has played a significant part in my having seen it through to the end. Frankly, it’s so deeply personal that I figured no one but me would be reading it by the time I got to the last chapter.


End file.
